The Wii U and Dreamcast have a lot of things in common, for one they both have secondary displays on the controller and the other is that they both didn’t sell as expected. The Wii U, in its third year on sale, has finally surpassed sales of the Dreamcast. The SEGA Dreamcast reached sales of 10.6 million units 18 months after release, Nintendo just announced that the Wii U reached sales of 10.73 million units recently.
While the Dreamcast did reach a higher number of sold units at a faster rate, it was also heavily discounted from its original MSRP launch price compared to Wii U, which has had a minor $50 re-configure bundle price drop. I remember after the Dreamcast got discontinued how you could get a bundle with a few games for around $50 dollars, as stores where trying to get rid of them.
[Source: NintendoLife]
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Technically then it seems that overall, the Dreamcast has proven to be more successful than the Wii U, as it reached that milestone far sooner than the Wii U did in significantly less time.
As well as outperforming the Xbox, the 360 and the X1 in Japan as well.
Nin shouldnt be proud or try to go even xith dreamcast. Dc had more games and sold more in a shorter period. If dc would v survived it would v done a wii like sales.
Also note it was only 18 months in America.
Japan had an additional 11 months.
Since we count total units it should be significantly 29 months.
That said, Dreamcast did not have a World Wide launch.
Had it launched in 1998 in America, it would have probably sold 10 million more units (had SOA marketed it just as well).
That’s the other thing, too many people act like the Dreamcast came out everywhere in 99 when it didn’t, it was delayed in the west by almost an entire year. Pretty certain the Dreamcast would have been even more successful if it wasn’t delayed, nobody would care that it didn’t have a DVD drive (which it almost did) as the technology still cost a bomb then, and so many people didn’t buy the PS2 when it came initially for being a games console, they got it as it was a dirt cheap DVD player at the time.
Compared to many other consoles, the Dreamcast has faired prety well in hindsight, and still to this day, has a loyal cult following that ever the PS1, PS2, Xbox, the Wii and soon the PS3 and 360 wont have, that’s the biggest irony here, that the Dreamcast still technically outlasted them all. It’s hardly a failure in the grand scheme of things when all is considered, it definitely could (and should) have done better, but it holds the distinction of being the only console that was failed by the people, whether the collective consumers, distributors and retailers as a whole, it wasn’t the Dreamcast itself that failed.
Even today, the Dreamcast still gets stuff produced for it, same can’t be said for consoles as old as it or even consoles newer than it.
For anyone that hasn’t, go through the comments section from the sourced Nintendo Life post. The commenters take quite an issue (rightfully so) with the way Nintendo Life wrote their blurb, especially with the reasons the Dreamcast ‘failed.’ Though in general Nintendo Life staffers are not very good writers. Their reviews are detailed, but their editorials are pretty bad and often end before a point is even made.
On the topic of WiiU, it really needs a price drop. Even $50. I would like to pick one up, and will eventually.
Dreamcast reached that number in less time and with the over hyped Playstation 2 released the year after…
Nintendo came for a 100 million console (Wii), had an incredible marketing power (that Sega lacked), and Wiiu came when 360 and PS3 were already very old.
if WiiU had been released in the era of PS2, it would’ve been destroyed.