/v/ - Video Games★

Stop the PS2 from coming out.

Alternatively, add a DVD player function.

>>15672851

I don't think they could have sold it at a reasonable price with a DVD player in 1998.

By being less powerful and more oriented on catalog and cheapness.

Historically, the weakest consoles have been the winners in most cases.

>Providing a better controller

>Dropping the mini-console gimmick

>More 4-player games

In the end, I think it was a victim of having relatively weak hardware compared to its contemporary competition. It was certainly more powerful than the Playstation, maybe more powerful than the N64, but against the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox HUEG, it couldn't hold up.

>>15672857

In the late 90s, I remember my family picking up a DVD player barely larger than a DVD case and slightly thinner, for a mere £60. The technology was certainly there, but at the time of designing the Dreamcast, it wasn't.

I think it'd have better luck had it been produced a little earlier, and an upgraded or new version should have been in production by the time the original faded into obscurity.

>>15672849 (OP)

No. It was doomed ever since Sega fucked up with the 32X and marketing and doing R&D for an addon for a console being phased out instead of the Saturn along with the infamous E3 1995, where they pissed on developers and retailers everywhere to the point that they refused to stock up on the Saturn. It basically made them lose so much profit in that time period, anything that came out afterwards would be a net loss, even if it was something as good as the Dreamcast.

Porn games.

>>15672897

Also, releasing it around the same time that the PS2 (at least in the US) was being announced didn't help at all, along with there really being no major games from companies like Squaresoft or Capcom to facilitate it's sales.

Cancel the 32x, delay the saturn to 1995/early 96, help all 32x devs transition to the saturn, with the saturn delay fix up the hardware a bit, tune it up and get the cart slot to read genesis games, market the saturn reasonably as the fixed up version is cheaper to manufacture, bring over japanese games and support ambitious projects to target the saturn primarily, and then the dreamcast would be saved.

>>15672857

Dont forget that Sony was part of the conglomerate that invented the DVD format. I'm not sure if Sega would have been given permission to launch a console that used DVDs first. They already lost money on the Dreamcast as is without royalties.

>>15672851

>Stop the PS2 from coming out.

When the PS2 was facing a shortage at launch, people were instead buying a PS1 over a Dreamcast.

>>15672897

This, it was all this.

>>15672929

>help all 32x devs transition to the saturn, with the saturn delay fix up the hardware a bit, tune it up and get the cart slot to read genesis games, market the saturn reasonably as the fixed up version is cheaper to manufacture

That was actually the entire point of the system, to help developers adjust to 32-bit programming. In fact, the 32X was suppose to be compatible with Saturn games (When you also had a Sega CD connected to the Genesis), but that idea got shelved early on once SoJ started doing their own thing.

>>15672941

There was a prototype Dreamcast that ran DVDs, but it debuted the same year the console cancelled.

By releasing good games.

>>15672906

But Capcom did support the Dreamcast heavily.

>>15672849 (OP)

They should have advertised the ability to use it to surf the web. Web tv was a thing at the time.

>>15672849 (OP)

Again with this thread?

It could never be saved. Sega of America killed any chances of Sega being as successful as before.

>Design a controller meant for human hands

>dont bother competing in the jap markets where you were always going to get slaughtered, go for the relatively untapped at that time European market.

>focus more on western developers rather then eastern, beating the xbox to the punch for european market shares.

>try to advertise the online aspect of the dreamcast more. Internet was blowing up and becoming widely available in the early 2000's.

>>15672849 (OP)

By no catering to actual Video Game players and focusing on normalfags.

>>15672929

>1) Either cancel the 32x altogether or release it as a standalone CD based console retrocompatible with Sega CD and Genesis games as a cheaper alternative to the Saturn

>2) Ditch that last-minute stitched together hack that was the 3D support for the Saturn, add more ram instead, and turn it into a 2D powerhouse capable of arcade perfect ports of CPS2 and Neo Geo games without the need for ram / rom carts

>3) When releasing the Dreamcast, better scout and cater to third-party devs and publishers

>>15673114

Actually, I'll walk that back because that is true ( I can think of that weird shmup game where everyone is on rollerskates, the Power Stone games, Dino Crisis, Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower and Resident Evil: Code Veronica). I still stand by the rest of that post and the previous post I made before that though.

Why did SoJ go full retard, bros?

Why didn't they let the mega drive just fade away instead of extending it's life with gimmicks that lasted a month and a half and focus on a 32 bit console entirely?

Why did Saturn have zero presence in the west alongside localized games?

>>15672849 (OP)

Start by killing everyone in sega of america.

>>15672849 (OP)

>Remove VMU gimmick

>Give controller second analog stick

>Make controller look less like a fisher price toy

>Advertise the online features more

How's that for a start?

More support from Microsoft, ideally enough for them to put their bucks behind Sega rather than going it alone. They had DirectX and Windows CE, and with the correct management could have been THE Xbox rather than its spiritual predecessor.

>>15674378

There was also the plan to give OG Xbox backwards compatibility with Dreamcast games, but the plan fizzled out.

>>15673129

Its funny when everyone gushes about how Dreamcast had a modem. How many games actually used it? Outside Japan?

Yeah Sega was first but so what when it amounted to nothing.

The Dreamcast arrived at a moment Sega's consumer trust was at the bottom. And indeed, I noticed that a lot of the people who bought the Dreamcast were often new blood, not people affected by the 32X fiasco or the Saturn's premature death. It also didn't help that Electronic Arts didn't support the system because of the conflict Sega had with 3Dfx (of which EA had stock investments) during the system's development. The death of the Dreamcast/fall of Sega is a mixture of the bad decisions made between 1994-1995 and the decline in popularity of arcades.

Sega had huge financial problems coming out of the Saturn era. Sony and Microsoft had gigantic marketing budget, and the Dreamcast advertising did almost never just show the superior graphics.

>>15672862

At some point, the Dreamcast got cheaper than the redesigned smaller PS1 in Europe, and the PS1 still sold better during that time.

>>15672867

>maybe more powerful than the N64

Mabye? Jesus, kids today. I had a N64, and getting a Dreamcast was like getting glasses. The Dreamcast had much better textures than the PS2. The PS2 launch was rather weak software-wise, but the brand being known as the winner of the last round of console wars, bigger marketing budget, and of course the DVD feature made the PS2 win.

>>15673129

They did.

>>15674705

>the superior graphics

To clarify, I didn't mean that in comparison to Gamecube and XBox of course. But they had a window of opportunity when their stuff was on top.

>>15672849 (OP)

If they flat out advertised that you could play burned games without a modchip… although that would have broken many contracts.

>>15672915

Of course a jarpig goon would be shilling for Sony while shitting on systems that arcade chads like such as the Dreamcast.

https://twitter.com/ThomasTkalinske

https://twitter.com/AlNilsen

>tfw they turned out to be cucks along with SoA's President during the Dreamcast era Peter Moore (who ended up with EA and defended the journo clique)

That leaves Bernie Stolar and that guy fired a bunch of staff, some of whom went to work straight for Sony as a result. Sega's downfall was largely the fault of the Japanese division being too prideful to let others do what worked for the west resulting in poor communication and in fighting, but I can't help but think that Sega was doomed anyway. As noted with Stolar, SoA had their fair share of mis-steps as well.

>>15672849 (OP)

needed more deeveersaytay and negritos.

>>15672849 (OP)

>How could it have been saved?

Just use the VMU, it's right there in the pic, retard.

>>15673316

>>3) When releasing the Dreamcast, better scout and cater to third-party devs and publishers

the dreamcast didn't have a library problem, capcom was doing some of their best stuff on the system with games like cannon spike, powerstone, mvc2, sfa3, etc. They had awesome third parties on board. Problem was a financial one and the DC while making money just wasn't making enough to keep sega around. Sega only dropped out because they were deep in the red.

>>15674680

The 3DFX deal going bad was 3DFX's doing, they were way too anxious. It was also for the better as NEC's PowerVR was so forward thinking and well optimized that Nvidia had to copy the principle technology it used for their future hardware by 2010s and it got them out of the slump that AMD put them in at the time. Dreamcast was literally everything going right but simply not having the money to survive.

>>15674555

>How many games actually used it? Outside Japan?

Quite a few

http://enacadeplease use archive.is.com (use archive.is)/dic.nsf/enwiki/1816499

>>15675920

>Sega only dropped out because they were deep in the red.

Finally someone who gets it. Sega was hemorrhaging money throughout the mid-late 90s, to the point where Hayao Nakayama was already making plans to pull out of the console business by 1997.

>>15675950

Yep. I think it's a shame because some of their failures shouldn't have been and some of their mistakes really should have been approached with a head that was on straight. Too much panicking from a competitor that should have had all the confidence they had for a time toppled a giant. It's also worth mentioning that their president left the company after the DC's failure and literally paid from his pocket to keep Sega alive at all.

At this point I just think it's worth appreciating what we had, and while it may not have been around long enough it had so much going for it as it was, and their earlier efforts with systems like the Saturn it's worth exploring why they had success where they did and enjoying it for that reason.

>>15675991

>their president left the company

Except Isao Okawa wasn't a president, he was a cheif investor and Chairman. And he didn't leave Sega, he died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isao_Okawa

Once he was gone, that seemed to lead into Sega's dark age and the merger with Sammy.

>>15676026

My mistake, I may have been blurring it in the memory hole with Square.

>>15674387

Sega of America was composed of leftists. They all lied about everything involving their products, marketing and their (false) claims about the japanese branch.

>>15672915

what is going on with this image

the issue isn't the dreamcast, what they should of done was never made the Saturn and spent that time developing the Dreamcast, or fuck never releasing the Sega 32x or Sega CD

What everyone else said. The Dreamcast was doing well in the west as the first "next gen" console, just not well enough to save Sega from the damage they had already accrued from their terrible decisions. Frankly, I don't think anything could have. The real way to save the Dreamcast would have been to never release the 32X (and possibly the Sega CD), use more in-cart expansion chips to bridge the gap between the 16 and 32-bit gens instead, stop the infighting between SoA and SoJ, actually support the Saturn in America, and of course not pull the infamous E3 "power play" with the Saturn that made all the devs and retailers hate them. Sega would have been in a much better state financially and have so much more good will with businesses and consumers alike if they had acted so. There are a few things the Dreamcast could have done better (should have had a better controller with 6 face buttons and 2 analog sticks, should have used DVDs instead of GD-ROMs), and a lot of ways the Saturn could have been designed better, but they all could have been made up for if Sega hadn't been so horribly managed.

>>15676266

Aspect raidou.

>>15672849 (OP)

DVD player from the get go, 8 buttons on the controller, 3dfx instead of PowerVR, signing Namco, EA, Squaresoft, and other developers to third party exclusive contracts.

If they have fixed their shitty opening it would have sold better.

>>15673417

>>15673265

>Sega of America is all at fault

Are you forgetting about Sega of Japan forcing Sega of America to do dumb shit when Tom Kalinske was around? Then again Tom is a cuck, so who knows how good his word is anymore.

Sega of Europe can get some blame for looking down on everyone too and being cunts.

>>15675950

>>15675920

>Finally someone who gets it. Sega was hemorrhaging money throughout the mid-late 90s, to the point where Hayao Nakayama was already making plans to pull out of the console business by 1997.

I dare you to try to tell that to that nigger Patrick Lawson/tornado1994/Sega United/the guy behind the Dreamcast 2 and Ringedge and Ringwide hoax. He'll fucking flip.

>>15672849 (OP)

The DC failed for a few reasons, none of which were fixable by 1999:

>repeated mishandling of the Saturn pissed off most third-party devs, resulting in little third-party support at launch

>Sega itself was bleeding cash in '99 due to the above, couldn't afford anything short of a huge and immediate success

>rampant piracy, probably the result of sabotage by Microsoft, further drove off third-party support and took a big bite out of game sales

>proprietary disc format

In order to salvage the DC, you'd first have to go all the way back to '95 to salvage the Saturn. Saturn succeeds = Sega has money and third party support in '99 = strong launch lineup, potential DVD support (which also mitigates the piracy issue since DVD burners weren't widespread until 2004 or so), and when things do go wrong Sega actually has some cash reserves to fall back on.

It was literally the best console at the time and I hated Sega but they pulled this one out of an angels ass after screwing up with the x32/segacd and even the Saturn. The GC was awesome. Sadly, they had burned the people once too often and most chose to just wait for the PS2. I still have my original GC that I got as a Bday gift the week it came out. Works fine still.

>>15672849 (OP)

By not fucking up the Saturn's launch.

>>15674387

When Limp Bizkit endorses your console, you know it's fucked!

>>15672862

It already was less powerful compared to PSX/N64.

Better controller instead of one with only one joystick and not enough buttons. Better name as Dreamcast is the stupidest name for a console ever. Time travel to undo Sega corporate infighting that sabotaged all of their efforts for half a decade. A better plan for Sonic Adventure instead of shitting out a mediocre game.

>>15677477

Another fixable issue: Never should have moved out of fucking Redwood City to San Francisco where property and rent were so fucking expensive. Plus, you're farther away from nearby companies when you were in Redwood City.

Tom Kalinske may be a cuck, but he is dead right about that issue. You can easily poach people from other companies without having to move them, you get to stay in contact with those companies/developers about developing for your system. It's just a better infrastructure overall.

Blame (((Bernie Stolar))) for the San Francisco move amongst others.

Never trust a jew named Bernie.

>>15673950

>Remove VMU

Do you want the console black-coloured, smaller, completely square and with blue LEDs too you fucking faggot?

>>15672849 (OP)

i dont even know how it died. everyone loved that damn thing

If the Dreamcast had launched in 2000 with a DVD drive it might have done better. In 1998 it was WAY too expensive.

Hell Sony actually made a loss on the PS2 when it launched.

>>15672849 (OP)

Shouldn't have hired a Yes-Man faggot to be President for the American Branch while having an intense fucking case of butthurt that a whitu piggu gaijin like Tom Kalinske and a blue furry hedgehog, doing a massive media campaign and starting the first case of Face-to-face Console War that was anathema to the Japanese that pushed Sega into a global brand and made their console to arcade games the biggest shit in the World. And Tom Kalinske's influence and power was made impotent by the nips (Everything Tom Kalinske tells you to do, do the opposite!) and warnings that launching a console WITH NO GAMES was a bad fucking idea. Bernie Stolar was a fucking sycophant while blatantly ignoring the games drought and fucking telling people that the Saturn was stillborn, leaving die-hard Sega fans and their market image into the shitter, and Peter Moore going directly to the source and telling the Japanese Board that they fucked up.

TL:DR, it could have been saved if you fixed the idiotic and self-suicidal internal rivalries, bad management and PR, and being so goddamn out of touch with their fans, who grew up to be disappointed to them or autists like Chris-chan.

>>15677580

Which game on N64 or PS1 looks as good as Dead or Alive 2 on the Dreamcast, genius? Anybody replying Vib Ribbon will be doxxed, kidnapped, and imprisoned in my basement where they'll have to play Ubisoft's PS4 Tetris every day.

>>15677477

Tom was right about the 32X being a better option, it already had a HUGE installed base with the Genesis and it was cheaper than getting a nextgen console. People seem to forget that the Snes made it all the way to 1999 thanks to superFX games, they even got Doom running on the fucking thing. Had the 32X been equipped with a dedicated graphics chip instead of the second SH2 it might been able to run Quake, imagine the impact that would've made.

So yeah, they should've focused more on keeping the Genesis alive and delaying the Saturn until they could get hardware that didn't fucking suck.

>inb4 "but the N64 failed because it was too late"

The N64 failed because nintendo were greedy fuckers with their licenses while sony basically sucked the dicks of any devs willing to work in their console. Also it didn't help that the carts were not just really fucking expensive but nintendo further inflated the production costs to make even more money off third-party devs.

Having a more aggressive customer focused localization plan would have solved ALL of the issues Sega faced in the west.

Working with the Eurofag market when nobody was localizing to Europe would have also been a big boost of sales, and made a huge impact on how dominant PC gaming was over there at the time.

>>15676561

what was the power play?

>>15679887

The Saturn released $100 more expensive than the Playstation

>>15676561

>>15676590

>signing Namco, EA, Squaresoft, and other developers to third party exclusive contracts.

EA fucking hated sega even tho they made tons of money with the Genesis. Namco was still salty over losing the arcade race and square never worked with sega at all, were married to nintendo first and then sony.

>>15679897

oh right, the whole "$299" mic drop moment

>>15672849 (OP)

It didn't have a chance from the beginning. SEGA CD, 32X and to a lesser extend the Saturn fucked SEGA financially so hard they had to stop producing Dreamcasts after only 2 years.

>>15672851

>DVD player

Nice meme.

>>15679951

>>DVD player

>Nice meme.

I know a few of my friends went with a PS2 so they could have their own personal DVD player in their room. It was a huge selling point.

>>15679588

Hitler dubs confirm. Honestly, I would have said no online, until around 2004 or 2005, since broadband was more readily available at that time. Packing the system with a modem that only a fraction of people would use was ridiculous.

>>15680512

>The installed base of the Genesis at best irrelevant, and at worst a hindrance

Nigger you high? it had a bigger base than the Snes in 1993 and even in 1995 it had 40% of the market at the time.

>Yes, they were expensive ($30 more than a regular game),

VR was $100 at launch dumbass, the 32X as you mentioned was only 60 more.

Neck yourself

>>15680497

It was, but there wasn't really a cheap option for a Dreamcast to have a DVD player.

NO

>>15681682

It doesn't matter. It still restricted who could get the new system. Even IF getting both was a good deal after you did the math, parents can be dumb and stingy when it comes to their kids' interests. "What do you mean you want TWO new game systems at once? No way, I'm only getting one."

>>15679629

32x was a hunk of shit. I own one and I never play it, it has so few games worth checking out. Add to it that it's a pain in the ass to hook up. I love my Genesis and Sega CD but the 32x was a disaster. If Sega of America could have gotten in line and got on the Saturn train they could have focused on the Saturn's strengths instead of making the console feel stillborn, after all that's what they did in Japan and it worked well over there, same with the UK, only Sega of America were stubborn faggots living in the past. Saturn to this day is one of the best systems for arcade games from that period.

>>15682697

Same, I bought one at a Toysrus tent sale in the 90s for 20 dollars.

I only play Tempo on it, otherwise it's a piece of shit.

>>15672849 (OP)

Worked a deal out with an electronics company that let a dreamcast buyer get a voucher for a free dvd player at launch.

>>15679588

Ah yes Sega net, by the time that was actually up the Dreamcast was already dead.

Microsoft actually LAUNCHED with XBL and a killer app that utilized it to its full power.

>>15672849 (OP)

by learning how important marketing is to normalfag. I can't remember any ads for the dreamcast ..

>>15683353

There's a reason sega.net was late to the party. Most of the infrastructure that made it up was salvaged from the remnants of SegaSoft's HEAT.NET, which itself was hemorrhaging cash.

Microsoft also didn't launch with XBL, otherwise Halo would have been an even bigger hit when the system launched.

>>15679588

>no DVD

Likely nothing they could have done about it. Unlike Sony SEGA didn't have in-house capabilities to develop and manufacture a DVD player.

>online gaming way too early, nobody had broadband att

Pretty much. Even with the gargantuan playerbase of the PS2 online games were few and far between and the idea would take years more to penetrate Western markets enough to become an expected feature instead of a curiosity.

>too much focus on the $199 price limiting what they could ship. Compare that to the PS2 which nobody had a problem with the $299 price because it came with DVD

The PS2 still sold at a loss though. It was only so cheap (with the DVD player) because Sony already had a whole line of DVD players in production and the technical know-how to marry them to a gaming console.

>since they had a 2-3 years launch advantage over valve

I have my doubts. Steam was a complete shitshow at launch and Valve had to struggle to get it off the ground. This was a time when SEGA didn't even know PC gaming existed, let alone had any interest in it.

>Its one of those cases when buying your way into a market its way cheaper than reinventing the wheel

Did MS ever make back the money they burned on all the various XBoxes?

>>15683353

>Microsoft actually LAUNCHED with XBL and a killer app that utilized it to its full power.

The fuck? No they didn't. And what "killer app" are you referring to? MechAssault?

>>15683724

Halo launched on the same day as the XBox IIRC, November the 15th 2001.

>>15683729

Oh, sure. I thought you meant a killer app for XBL.

>>15683729

And live launched Nov 15, 2002, a year later.

There's a reason System Link parties were a thing back then.