Dreamcast Magic

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Article:
The Dreamcast from Success to Ashes

In this months article I will discuss the reasons behind the Dreamcasts ultimate failure in the US and Japan.

US

Sega's name wasn't in good standards at late to middle 90's with the failure of many of its system from the 32X to the Sega Saturn. But gamers and forget full public were willing to forgive and move on. When the Dreamcast hit the US shores it had every aspect of a huge console launch, and a long and great system life. From a nation wide magazine to an array of well done tv ads, Sega's well planned marketing was a big hit and consumers who were dieing to get their hands on a Dreamcast. When the day came on September 9th 1999 the Dreamcast become the fastest selling console in history.

The Dreamcast took in over $97 Million on the first day of launch in North America, and sold over 500,000 machines in the first two weeks. Setting a record of over 1 Million machines sold in North America in just over 2 and half months, making the Dreamcast the fastest selling video games machine in North America ever. To make it even better Sega was promising fully online games at the end of summer 2000. But even with all the anticipation, hype and success there was a looming console in the background at all times. Sony had to make sure to keep its loyal fan base from moving to Sega's far superior console and wait for the PS2 to be released.

But how could you do this, simple, the words Sega feared and hated, the PS2 would support playing dvd's. After those words Sony's fans were more then willing to deal with the heavily outdated graphics for a few more months for the PS2 to be released. The reason the Dreamcast didn't support playing dvd's is simple. The Dreamcast started development back in 1997 and dvd's weren't even around. One year later it was released in Japan and one year later to the US.

At the time it was impossible for Sega to make a cheap system that supported dvd's, but it ended up it became Sega�s unforeseen Achilles heel. When summer 2000 rolled around the online games promised never happened and development for what it would come to be called in the US and Japan Sega Net took longer then expected and was delayed until late 2000. Sega had already lost its cards it on its late online support but how would it fare when the PS2 finally was released? From the first day Sega knew it was in big trouble if it couldn't beat the PS2 that coming holiday season in sales or come close to it. The month Sony released the PS2 Dreamcast sales feel throw the floor.

If the Dreamcast didn't do well enough it would fail and Sega would drop its support. As time came Sega felt like it would be able to stay in the game, as the late online titles like Quake 3 and StarLancer were released along with a multiply online sports titles. In addition Ulala from Space Channel 5 hosted the MTV Video Music Awards. Since the release of Space Channel 5 in June 2000, this super-sexy alien crime fighter had graced hundreds of magazine pages, airwaves and sold millions of games. One the same platform they promoted the Dreamcast on one year ago for its launch, they did again. 3 new commercials hit the airwaves promoting SegaNet, the Dreamcast and Sega prepared for the fight of its life.

The news was looking even better as word got out that Sony would only able to meet half the demands for the PS2 they had predicted to be sold. Leaving the Dreamcast at a good position to say the least. But when it was all over the PS2 ad won out and the sales for the Dreamcast were much lower then expected. The press was asking Sega of America's PR representative questions on whether they are currently still making Dreamcast consoles and the reply was heart breaking. At first saying yes, but seconds later admitting they had stopped, after further questions gave up the details that Sega had millions of consoles in storage ready to be sold.

Sega of America promised the Dreamcast fans 100 new games in 2001 and they delivered almost all of them and on February 12, 2002 we saw the release of the last Dreamcast game in the US, NHL 2K2.

Japan

The Dreamcast was released in Japan a full year ahead of the US and with its 2 year head start you would think it would have been able to complete with the PS2. The Japanese public had ate up the Dreamcast by buying millions of systems before the PS2 was even released. But what truly brought down the Dreamcast in Japan was a simple cultural change from videotapes to dvd's. Once again this change of format hurt the Dreamcast badly, yet it was able to survive even today and releases are planned will into 2004. For the launch Sega of Japan ran highly successful ads of children laughing at Sega's now past on president Isao Okawa and saying how bad the Dreamcast was, which in the end were nightmares he was having and quite funny to watch, and it worked.

Selling millions of Dreamcast and putting Sega's once trashed name back on top. In addition a stream of ads followed every major game released there from Skies of Arcadia to Samba De Amigo, something unheard in the US other then around the holiday season. Before the PS2 was released the cheapest dvd players in Japan cost $300. A price the Japanese public wasn�t willing to pay just for higher quality movies. That is until the PS2 was released, which became the cheapest dvd player on the market and could play video games too of course making it a very hot item for everyone in Japan.

Selling millions of PS2 in Japan, Sega of Japan knew it had lost the support of the Japanese public and there was nothing they could do about it. Even so the 2 year lead it had on the PS2 made it able to survive even till today. The Sega owned in house game developer Sonic Team even released the game Puyo Puyo Fever for the Dreamcast in Japan this past March. This is quite an amazing feat and it showed Sega of Japan does see the Dreamcast as still alive, we can hope they release more titles to it in the future. Sadly one of Sega's biggest mistake when looking back is the timing the Dreamcast was released.

When it was released well after the peak of the PlayStation era it easily dominated it. But with its squeal not far from Sega might have been able to keep it alive in the US longer if it had been released in 1998 like in Japan and not waited for developers get used to programming it. The Dreamcast might have been forgotten by the public but there are people it is has touched and see a great system thrown aside, for those who enjoyed it from 2000 to 2001 got the treat of almost 50 online Dreamcast titles in the US and well over 170 in Japan. While the golden age of the Dreamcast is gone and many of its online titles are now offline we can still marvel at its great capabilities we can still enjoy even today.