Sega’s Final Venture Into The Console World,
Ended Only Two Years After It’s Release.
The Dreamcast was to be Sega’s last hope.
Everyone was aware of it. It was a chance to succeed where the Dreamcast’s predecessor, the Sega Saturn, had failed. The Dreamcast was considered to be ahead of its time, greatly helping Sega’s reputation.
It was one of Sega’s most successful consoles ever, setting the record for the number of units preordered before launch as well as the number sold in the first twenty four hours of release.
Alas, despite its success, the Dreamcast was not to be. Nor was it enough to keep Sega afloat in the console market, and it was the last console that Sega ever produced, the production ending only two years after it first began.
History of the Dreamcast
It was the president of Sega of America who pushed its Japanese headquarters into developing a new gaming console. The Saturn was a dead console and he was smart enough to realize this. “The Saturn is not our future”, he said at the E3 of 1997. The president of Sega then did something that was greatly unexpected.
He hired Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM to head a group to work on the new console. Naturally, the Japanese hardware group was not happy and had no intention of relinquishing its control over the future of Sega in the console market. This led to one of two possible consoles to succeed the Saturn.
Eventually, the Japanese group’s design was chosen. 3dfx, the manufacturer of the graphics processor to be used in the American version, declared its IPO and revealed the details of the contract with Sega which was supposed to be kept secret, as Sega naturally did not wish to reveal its work on a next generation console – why would they do something like that when it was their last hope?
This is thought to be the reason for the American version not being chosen, and 3dfx later filed a lawsuit against Sega which was eventually settled out of court.
Hardware
The standard Dreamcast is a dull grey and white, but since its release it’s seen a variety of makeovers. There was a black sports pack, and different color cases to replace the standard grey. There also have been special editions of the console, including the Sonic anniversary edition, a Sakura Taisen edition, and even a Hello Kitty version.
The games were on a propriety format known as GD-ROM. It was the only form of privacy protection, but it was quickly defeated by hackers. Now, not only is the copy protection bypassed, but many users’ can also make copies of games that are almost completely perfect.
The Dreamcast also featured a very interesting memory card unit. The VMU (Visual Memory Unit) was a memory card with an LCD screen that you could use to play mini-games loaded onto it from certain Dreamcast games. It was also capable of displaying what it had stored, and it was even able to be connected to another VMU for data exchange. Unfortunately, most considered it a ‘power hog’, and opted to play without it.
The Dreamcast was the first gaming console to feature a built-in modem. The modem allowed users to subscribe to SegaNet, an internet service provided by Sega. Initially, playing online games was free; however, after SegaNet closed down many companies begin to charge to play these same games online.
Launch
As previously mentioned, initially the Dreamcast was doing quite well. It enjoyed high sales in the United States, even if they had been lackluster throughout the rest of the world.
In Japan, Sega had offended many third party developers with the ending of the Saturn, which was still surviving in Japan. Many of their projects were ended after large amounts of money were put into them.
In Europe, the market was largely ignored. Sega made a very large mistake in hiring third-party companies for the promotion of the Dreamcast there. These companies largely didn’t even allocate enough funds for the promotion of the system. Another mistake in Europe involved SegaNet, Sega’s internet service. Sega allowed third party companies to use an open pricing scheme. As such, these companies typically charged three times the amount that an ISDN connection would cost. It’s thought that if Sega hadn’t made quite such a blunder, it may be in the console business now.
Sad, But Not Overly So.
Nowadays, it’s hard to find a Dreamcast anywhere. Games are few and far between in the UK, and although they are still being released in Japan from time to time, there is no indication that the Dreamcast will ever ‘bounce back’.
This sixth generation console was Sega’s last hope, but it seems that they fumbled the ball on too many issues, and hadn’t been able to recover.
It’s not likely we’ll see any other Sega consoles any time soon, but one can hope.
