Quote:
Originally posted by ant512
they kept releasing sub-standard hardware and abandoning it a few months later. (Of course, they eventually did that with both the Saturn and the Dreamcast. Now there's a shock!)
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For a start, Sega didn't abandon the Saturn, in fact quite the opposite. The reason Sega lost so much money is because they wouldn't let go of the Saturn (especially in Japan) and ended up pouring more and more money into to try and keep it alive. This is why the Dreamcast became the make or break system for them. And to be honest, it could have done the job. They needed it to make money and it may have done so was it given a chance.
It was released at the wrong time, Sony had such a strong foothold and seemed to have released information on the PS2 at a time when the Dreamcast was trying to make an impact. A lot of people just sat tight with their PS and thought that the Dreamcast would do another Sega.
Unfortunately all the early adopters of the dreamcast were in for a shock when third party support all but dried up because of piracy. No one was willing to make games for a console that wouldn't sell any games. And Sega weren't about to kill themselves off completely. At least they learnt from the mistakes of the Saturn for one thing. They let it go. Many people hated the fact that Sega dropped the Dreamcast because games just stopped and the console died prematurely. If Sega would have carried on supporting it, yeah we might have seen some more games, but we would have also seen Sega dissapear completely and they would have never been able to carry on as a Software Company.
The strangest thing about the Dreamcast is how it is always looked back upon fondly. People always thought it was a good system, with a great lineup of games.
So much innovation too. Oh well. Such is life.