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**RadcliffXX** · 09-21-2010, 05:44 AM

The Saturn was a failure, the Dreamcast, not so much. Failure implies something was inherently wrong with the product, where in this case nothing was wrong with the Dreamcast and as a matter of fact, the DC was a technological marvel, given it's built in 56k modem for online play and VGA adapter for crisp play on monitors. It's demise was attributed to the PS2 "Hype Machine" and their marketing blitz. There were few games, if any, initially that were technologically superior to their DC counterparts. Look at Shenmue...

There are many different types of failure and many cases can be made against good products that were not successful commercially.

I didn't think the Dreamcast did that bad, at least in its first year or two. I know you have to account for game sales as well (or perhaps more specifically), but they sold what, like 10 million consoles? Unfortunately I don't know the splits by country or how much money they were making / losing on each and overall but I do remember a lot of buzz about sales figures during its launch.

The Dreamcast did fail in terms of its short lifespan and I think also gets a lot of negative press for being the last console to precede the downfall of Sega as a console manufacturer. I think you can consider it a failure in those ways, and that's despite the fact that I enjoyed the games I had on the console.

09-21-2010, 05:44 AM	#39
RadcliffXX Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 636 Senior Member	The Saturn was a failure, the Dreamcast, not so much. Failure implies something was inherently wrong with the product, where in this case nothing was wrong with the Dreamcast and as a matter of fact, the DC was a technological marvel, given it's built in 56k modem for online play and VGA adapter for crisp play on monitors. It's demise was attributed to the PS2 "Hype Machine" and their marketing blitz. There were few games, if any, initially that were technologically superior to their DC counterparts. Look at Shenmue... There are many different types of failure and many cases can be made against good products that were not successful commercially. I didn't think the Dreamcast did that bad, at least in its first year or two. I know you have to account for game sales as well (or perhaps more specifically), but they sold what, like 10 million consoles? Unfortunately I don't know the splits by country or how much money they were making / losing on each and overall but I do remember a lot of buzz about sales figures during its launch. The Dreamcast did fail in terms of its short lifespan and I think also gets a lot of negative press for being the last console to precede the downfall of Sega as a console manufacturer. I think you can consider it a failure in those ways, and that's despite the fact that I enjoyed the games I had on the console.
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