What if SEGA had taken the risk to compete with PS2?

[CrazyT]

I sometimes feel that SEGA had given up too early with the competition they got.

The thing I always wonder, what if SEGA did know its own strength and kept pushing its already established experiences into new competitive games in the market. Would that have broaden the console sales or would it have brought SEGA to an even worse state?

Maybe SEGA was too easily intimidated by the PS2? Or was the easy piracy for the DC never gonna recover its damage?

[semmie]

I sometimes feel that SEGA had given up too early with the competition they got.

The thing I always wonder, what if SEGA did know its own strength and kept pushing its already established experiences into new competitive games in the market. Would that have broaden the console sales or would it have brought SEGA to an even worse state?

Maybe SEGA was too easily intimidated by the PS2? Or was the easy piracy for the DC never gonna recover its damage?

it would v possibly won or either lose badly.
but they didnt have to compete ps2. to stay existant would be good enough.
the master system for example never ment to fight the NESty. but it stayed alive.

im with ye on this. they gave up too early. but they know why.

[cooprey]

For me it was piracy, now I'm 40 years old with a good job and am able to collect original copies of games, back then I was on minimum wage with a new born baby and a mortgage so it was an easy decision to go down the copy games route.

I regret this now as me and many thousands of others put paid to possibly the best console ever which i now play on most days (I'm building an arcade machine based around it)

[semmie]

For me it was piracy, now I'm 40 years old with a good job and am able to collect original copies of games, back then I was on minimum wage with a new born baby and a mortgage so it was an easy decision to go down the copy games route.

I regret this now as me and many thousands of others put paid to possibly the best console ever which i now play on most days (I'm building an arcade machine based around it)

may god forgive u. we the sega fans are forgiving u. we will baptise u from scratch and put a sega hat on your head and ull be wearing red shoes of nike..

yeah man ur forgiven. but your atonement will be that u have to buy 10 rare games
and one of them is panzer dragoon saga of the saturn

[Barry the Nomad]

Welcome to the forums cooprey! Don't let Semmie scare you away. 

I've heard that burned discs kill a Dreamcast's laser, unless that was an old wives tale cooked up by SEGA to curb piracy. If true, I guess SEGA got their revenge over time, as all the people playing tons of pirated games now have broken consoles.

[semmie]

Welcome to the forums cooprey! Don't let Semmie scare you away. 

I've heard that burned discs kill a Dreamcast's laser, unless that was an old wives tale cooked up by SEGA to curb piracy. If true, I guess SEGA got their revenge over time, as all the people playing tons of pirated games now have broken consoles.

its not a rumor. the normal cd rom needs to spin faster to perforrm. skies of arcadia is the perfect example. it is a gd rom game and was compressed to play on cd rom.

what were the consequences.

the power source left of the dc broke 2 times.
so if u say revenge .

yeah for sure

[mylifewithsega]

I think a lot of things killed the Dreamcast. Between the horrid launch of the Saturn here in the states, the momentum Sony had gained with PlayStation, in addition to the PS2's built-in DVD player, SEGA was caught between a rock and a hard case.

I loved the Dreamcast when it came out. I wanted Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2, Sonic Adventure and Resident Evil Code: Veronica. While I was excited for the PS2, the launch line-up was shit. I didn't want anything. I figured I'd wait for Metal Gear Solid 2 before picking one up.

Still, I wish SEGA had stayed in the game. Like Nintendo, they weren't looking to dominate your entertainment center; they made consoles, and awesome fuckin' games. That's it....

Just the way I want it, cause' that's the way I need it.

[cooprey]

fella i had demo disk of panzadragoon saga that i sold for £50.00 bout 8 years ago!!!! I am sega through and through, don't get me wrong i love me a bit of N64 and FFVII but all my 3 kids have been brought up playing sega games, my son who is now 12 is just teetering on going into retro stuff as he has an ipod so has sonic n stuff

I have in recent years torn myself away from XBOX 360 clans in COD and BF3 and have embraced the more noble days of gaming!

Oh and by the way i am fully aware of semmie and read his posts with much glee on a regular basis!!! all power to semmmie i say!!!!

[semmie]

fella i had demo disk of panzadragoon saga that i sold for £50.00 bout 8 years ago!!!! I am sega through and through, don't get me wrong i love me a bit of N64 and FFVII but all my 3 kids have been brought up playing sega games, my son who is now 12 is just teetering on going into retro stuff as he has an ipod so has sonic n stuff

I have in recent years torn myself away from XBOX 360 clans in COD and BF3 and have embraced the more noble days of gaming!

Oh and by the way i am fully aware of semmie and read his posts with much glee on a regular basis!!! all power to semmmie i say!!!!

thank you and welcome to the forum fellow

[Nameless 24]

It wouldn't have made a difference sadly.

The PS2 was *the* console to get (myself included as I wasn't a SEGA fan back then). What SEGA did was a brave and bold decision.

Despite the early death, in the long run it was for the best....they survived and are now making incredible games as of late!

[max_cady]

It was going to be a lose-lose situation, I'm afraid.

For a number of reasons:

-The Playstation brand in 90's was as strong as Nintendo;
-A big deal of loyal SEGA fans were pretty much upset that SEGA had abandoned it's Saturn console;
-As impressive as the Dreamcast was in those days, it had peaked as far as overall performance in 2001, just as the PS2 was still in it's early infancy, I can't remember the exact details, but I do remember at one point Tecmo saying that the Dreamcast was barely able to handle Dead Or Alive 2;
-Piracy, often cited as one of the easiest consoles to crack, till the PSP came along;
-Lack of DVD player, the Playstation 2 arrived at the right time just when people were moving away from Video-CD;
-SEGA not reaching the intended userbase, I don't think SEGA ever released the Dreamcast's actual sales numbers, that was telling;
-Major IPs that were made to be console sellers,but most of 'em underperformed;
-Not enough marketing, or rather effective marketing;

I could go on.

[segaismysavior]

I want to say Dreamcast could have easily held around with PS2, since that system took forever to make anything visually appealing, but DC would've definitely bombed when Gamecube and Xbox launched. Piracy was a huge issue, and suddenly most people did care about a game console having DVD support. The benefit to leaving when they did was having the dev kits available to port games to the later systems near launch.

I am curious though if Xbox would've happened when it did if SEGA hadn't bowed out of the hardware market. DC was their first dip in the pool with Windows CE support, so I'm curious what their attitude would've been if SEGA's console stuck around. Maybe they would've partnered for the next SEGA console instead of taking to the market by themselves.

[Randroid]

I want to say Dreamcast could have easily held around with PS2, since that system took forever to make anything visually appealing, but DC would've definitely bombed when Gamecube and Xbox launched. Piracy was a huge issue, and suddenly most people did care about a game console having DVD support. The benefit to leaving when they did was having the dev kits available to port games to the later systems near launch.

I am curious though if Xbox would've happened when it did if SEGA hadn't bowed out of the hardware market. DC was their first dip in the pool with Windows CE support, so I'm curious what their attitude would've been if SEGA's console stuck around. Maybe they would've partnered for the next SEGA console instead of taking to the market by themselves.

I agree with this. Also, there was a DVD Player attachment and HDD attachment in the works, wasn't there? I remember reading about them in Dreamcast magazine (that beautiful, beautiful dreamcast magazine).

Could Sega have perhaps released a model 2 version with a dvd player attachment built in, and eventually moved all of their new games to DVD only towards the end of the life cycle?

All speculation though.

[Nameless 24]

-Piracy, often cited as one of the easiest consoles to crack, till the PSP came along;

The PSP does well in Japan though. XD

It's sad really....I think SEGA should have either released the Dreamcast earlier (and perhaps used that as a replacement for the Saturn in the west), or they could have made the Dreamcast use the Wii's price model....make the parts as cheap as possible to make the console profitable on every sale.

I think they knew Sony would come out with something impressive, but they were ill prepared...especially when the American R&D team's idea were shot down despite their ideas being slightly better (not by much).

[ROJM]

I want to say Dreamcast could have easily held around with PS2, since that system took forever to make anything visually appealing, but DC would've definitely bombed when Gamecube and Xbox launched. Piracy was a huge issue, and suddenly most people did care about a game console having DVD support. The benefit to leaving when they did was having the dev kits available to port games to the later systems near launch.

I am curious though if Xbox would've happened when it did if SEGA hadn't bowed out of the hardware market. DC was their first dip in the pool with Windows CE support, so I'm curious what their attitude would've been if SEGA's console stuck around. Maybe they would've partnered for the next SEGA console instead of taking to the market by themselves.

But wasn't Sega actually gaining sales during the period of 2000/2001 in the USA? I always thought that they did leave to early rather than wait another year because it wasn't like the PS2 had the killer games it needed to sustain its system until 2003. And i think the good opinion with the system was starting to make an impact.