Was there any possible way sega could have made the dreamcast

>>3606998
Not fucking up with the Saturn. Never make the CD and 32X add ons.

what if

now bear with me here

what if

the dreamcast spun, and the disc stayed still?

DVD functionality. It's the main reason why the PS2 murdered it.

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>>3607005
>dvd functionality in 1998

>>3606998
Cancel Shenmue.

The budget from that alone could've kept Sega afloat and still in the console market even today.

>>3606998
Seganet porn.

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>>3607008
70 million dollars doesnt sound a lot in the grand scheme of things

>>3607013
It was a whopping amount of money for the time.

Charge $250 for it instead of listening to the jew that killed Saturn.

>>3607004
They could couple it with ads that talk about how "the competition just isn't revolutionary" and show the dreamcast spinning away at 4000 rpm while the other consoles remain motionless.

>>3607029
those other bastards don't even move, they'll say

look at our console! look how it spins!
how interesting!
it uses physics!

>>3607008

Shenmue's budget wasn't anywhere near as high as people think it was. That one hundred million dollar/every dreamcast owqner would have had to buy it twice bullshti was just IGN being retarded as usual.

Also the tech that was being developed for Shenmue found its way into countless other first party Sega games along the way, so it's not like its budget didn't benefit other games.

Also, they were laying the groundwork for a long series of games, the budget for Shenmue II was a fraction of the cost to develop Shenmue since the engine and base tech required were already there. The DC just died before the series could play out.

>>3606998

Yes.

It could have done what the Wii did. Find a successful gimmick that taps into a large user base and sell them exercise and sports games.

But if you want the system to be fun, maybe it did a damn good job of that already.

this many posts and no one has figured out that one of the primary factors was no EA and no strong third-party support, not to mention that Sony was riding a wave of success from the first Playstation

there was simply no way Sega was going to beat Sony in the 6th generation, Sega's time was over

>>3607089
No one beat sony that generation.

>>3607089
>was no EA

the 2K games were objectively better than EA games to the point where EA bought the nfl license so only they could make football games.

>>3607089
does capcom not count?

>>3606998
Honestly I think if they would've ran with the VMU MP3 player and create their own iTunes-like service it probably could've saved it

>>3607005
t. kid whose first console was a PS2

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>>3607003
This.

More compactable Saturn with a better library. No sega CD and mostly cut down 32x. No 32x and a sega CD that connects to the genesis better, or maybe a delayed sega CD that boosted capabilities enough to handle early PC CD rom titles decently instead of needing an outrageous fucking CD+32X combo for things!!

>>3607102
and none of that mattered, Madden had brand recognition, Sony had brand recognition, and Madden was on PS2.

Also, EA made games outside of Madden, notably FIFA.

>>3607103
Capcom did count, but Capcom wasn't enough. Fighting games hit their peak in the mid-90's, and Capcom was also publishing on PS2.

>>3607013
The picture is not correct bit. Instead of the Dreamcast to be a Saturn.

>>3606998
Not really. They fucked up big-time with the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn, and both retailers and some third-party companies (most notably Wal-Mart and EA, respectively) fucking hated Sega for it and refused to back the Dreamcast as a result. On top of that, the PlayStation utterly eclipsed the Saturn in market share, and its existing base waited for the PS2's launch rather than buy a Dreamcast (when they had to choose between the two).

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>underage AVGN watchers still calling the Sega CD a failure even though it had a reasonable number of popular games for an add-on and sega cut even on it

>>3607138
NFL 2k games sold more than Madden though

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>>3607004
Made my day

>>3607007

It would've made it expensive as all hell but it WAS possible. DVD functionality was even briefly considered for the PS1.

>>3607029
Made me actually laugh out loud.

>>3607110
Damn, such a badass idea.

>>3606998
>Was there any possible way sega could have made the dreamcast successful?

-Better 3rd party support in the West
-Better marketing of games that would actually appeal to Western gamers
-Better 3rd party support in the West
-Sony not coercing retailers into refusing to stock DCs
-Better 3rd party support in the West
-Sega not rebounding from two console generations where they did not do well in the West
-Better 3rd party support in the West
-Sony not absolutely knocking out it out of the fucking park in its first console in the previous generation.
-Better 3rd party support in the West
-SoA not being run by the same gibbering idiot who, in his time at SCEA, tried to prevent JRPGs from being brought to the US for the PSX
-Better 3rd party support in the West

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>>3607004
And they could put a giant Dreamcast logo right in the center and brainwash everyone into liking it!

>>3606998
>base it off arcade hardware
>ships with a chinese tier controller
>didn't ship with an arcade stick instead
>the vast majority of it's best games are arcade ports

I still play mine but with an X-Arcade stick.

>>3607110
>VMU MP3 player and create their own iTunes-like service it probably could've saved it

Music industry would never have been on board with that, at least at that point in time. It took Napster and co. solidly fucking them for years for Big Music to realize that the old model of 'two good songs, thirteen shit-tier album cuts, slap a $20-25 price tag and call it a day' service model was not cutting it anymore.

>>3607906
>.gif
>doesn't spin
>mildlydisappoint.jpg

>>3607003
The Mega CD was successful and well received. Why would they not make it?

>>3606998
I don't wanna shit up this nice board with a shitty thread so I'll ask here:
How much should I pay for a used DreamCast in Europe?
I'm looking for a model without box that comes with Unit, VMU, controllers and cables.
Can't find anything below 90 Yuros.

>>3608952
Apparently about 90 Euros.

>>3608970
Thanks

>>3606998
Yeah, but it would ideally have started by making the Saturn backwards compatible.

Then:
>Make Dreamcast full backwards compatible all the way to the Sega CD
>Use a modem/BBA combo instead of shipping with a modem
>Put a small amount of flash memory for saves

I'm trying really hard to stay within realistically doable things with the above list, so here's some fish talk tier shit:

>Color VMU
>DVD lens
>Wireless controllers
>Expansion port and an optional module that accepted Mega Drive carts

>>3608970
Buy it on Amazon for 45 dollars?

Locally I can't get it for less than 150 dollars, I would never pay that much.

>>3606998
moar games from sega

How to fix dreamcast

>Don't release 32x
>No surprise Saturn release
>Maybe rationalise the Saturn hardware a little rather than stacking more and more CPUs
>Translate the full Saturn library from Japan to international markets
>Needs to have a Sonic game on it
>Don't abandon the Saturn quite so early
>Stop supporting MD when Saturn comes along
In this way, customers and 3rd parties are are less likely to get pissed off with SEGA. Ill feeling towards SEGA as a result of Saturn is what eventually destroyed the dreamcast.

For Dreamcast:
>Ensure enough stock at launch
>No real way around DVD player

I don't think that the Dreamcast could've won it's generation, but it certainly could've held its own.

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It was a success but couldn't make up for Sega's debt over a lot of weird business decisions post Genesis.

So despite it being a good console and loved for it's time, Sega had already dug it's grave at that point.

I don't buy the idea that the DC needed to have a mainline Sonic game to succeed. Mascots can change with each gen.
Crash Bandicoot was not a big guy on the PS2 and Jak and Daxter was not a big guy on the PS3.
I don't know who the mascot of the PS3 is but I doubt he is now the mascot of the PS4.

I also reject the notion that "Sega alienated consumers with the Sega CD and 32X". A typical normie parent buying a christmas gift for their kid (single largest pie slice of console sales) in December 2000 had never heard of the Sega CD or 32X. If they had any concept of Sega at all it was based on the well-regarded Genesis and Sonic products.

The true and only reason why the Dreamcast failed was because Bernie made them sell it for $200 instead of $250.
There was no excusable reason for this. The PS2 would not come out for almost a year so there was no other console to undercut. Even visually impaired kids could see that the dreamcast DESTROYED the N64/PS/SS/3DO.

Sega should have advertised the Dreamcast as a CD music player (many normies even today don't know their consoles can play CDs) and partnered up with big music labels.
Games would come with coupons behind the manual that you would bring to the store to recieve discounts on select albums.

Sega should also have secretly partnered with some 3rd party to release a hack that let's you rip CDs to your PC through the modem built into the DC.

>>3606998
They could have kept manufacturing the DC. It would have continued selling in the U.S. But Sega was in debt at the time and they had to get rid of hardware, so it just didn't happen.

>>3609312
The $200 wasn't about undercutting but about making the console an impulse buy to get the largest market share possible.

Dreamcast having better graphics than older consoles was somewhat irrelevant, normies have shown time and time again that graphics aren't super important to them.

>>3609394
>normies have shown time and time again that graphics aren't super important to them
https://youtu.be/SqocFElidKI

>>3609539
They only mentioned graphics because there was no other way to distinguish the system at that point

The DC could've lived longer if it wasn't for the xbox. Ms spent the last year or so of the DC buying (and helping bury) the remains of the dc. Even sega, even after the death of the guy that owned the holding that owned them paid segas debt and died, knew that sony had already won. Sega, free of debt decided that it was a good time to go 3rd party and accepted those ms moneys. Devs had projects cancelled and released on the xbox for a fee too. Ms knew sony had won as well, but they wanted in and sega and the dc (with internet play, microphones, pc like hw and vga out) was the closest thing that existed that was like what they wanted to do.They knew that when they started working with them to put directx on the machine,and soon there was gonna be the not only the ps2 but the gc too, if the dc had stayed there would have been aready too many players for ms' plan to work, so they'd rather be the dc with the xbox.In fact gates tried to buy nintendo but they refused.He didn't have to buy sega just take its position and help them become third party.Without xbox sega would have had to keep the dc for at least two more years,releases wouldn't have dried almost overnight and with the arrival of the gcn it could have stayed like a silent and cool second or third runner,offering great value by having internet and cool arcade games at a low price,being a good alternative to people that for whatever reason didn't want (or already had) a ps2 (something that the xbox also ended up being).Stuff like the vmu-mp3 player was already in the works (as a dvd add on) it's just that,when the decision had to be made,thanks to or faut of,the path microsoft offered was the least risky one.

>>3609559
>with the arrival of the gcn it could have stayed like a silent and cool second or third runner

The Dreamcast was much noisier than the Gamecube.

Can someone who owned all 6 sixth gen systems rank them from greatest to least noisyness?

(in relelease order)
Dreamcast
PS2 fat
Gamecube
Xbox
PS2 slim external power brick version
PS2 slim internal power supply version

>>3609908
cbf ordering them, but I can tell you that earlier PS2 fats (SCPH-3xxxx) are much nosier than later PS2 fats (SCPH-5xxxx)

also VERY early xboxs (version 1.0) are noisier than the later versions as they have an additional fan on the GPU

>>3609559
Good job on the paragraphs, asshole.

>>3606998
I only realized this thing was a "failure" until i was 20. This thing was everywhere in Mexico. Everybody recognized them and they were in arcades (you could pay a Dollar for 2 hours of play).

>>3609929
>As an aside, I lol'd when I saw the Dreamcast release date on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast#Background

All of SEGA's problems stem from dysfunctional management in dumbshit corporate structuring/rivalry.

Many of SEGA's consoles were hugely popular outside of the US.

In Japan, Genesis and Saturn were massively popular systems and tore real chunks out of the competition

The Genesis was the leading console in the UK. Whilst the Saturn wasn't as popular, it still sold comparatively well alongside the N64 and PS1.

However, disastrous management by SEGA of America (SoA) is what eventually sunk the console arm of the company. In 97, when SoA approached SEGA of Japan (SoJ) demanding new hardware, nipponese execs did not understand. They looked at sale figures and found Saturn to be doing very well indeed. They simply did not give a shit about the SoA sales figures that suffered from a botched launch, no library, no localisations (SoA refused to localise and release many SoJ titles), limited RPGs, STI's dev hell with a Sonic Xtreme, etc. In addition, the Saturn board was build with over 1,000 folded processors in the traditional style.
To be fair, SoJ did not make things easy for SoA but whilst both of the two regions were behaving like assholes, at least glorious SoJ had made a success of their market. Hence, SoJ simply did not understand the need for a new console release and felt the Japanese market was not demanding new hardware at that time.

>>3609547
My point is normies actually have always cared about graphics. Shit, even the main selling point of the PS4 Pro is updating games to 4K HDR for MUH GRAFX

>>3609946
>In 97, when SoA approached SEGA of Japan (SoJ) demanding new hardware, nipponese execs did not understand. They looked at sale figures and found Saturn to be doing very well indeed

It's hilarious how easily this same scenario can be applied to SoJ and the Genesis though

>>3609946
>cont.

Things were quite so bad that the decision taken at he most senior level of the company was to build a new platform and get out of the gate early with a top-spec machine, good architecture for building games and try to out-perform the competition. This was a move designed purely to make gains in the USA and they understood the risk of further customer alienation with yet more hardware releases. However, regardless of whatever success Saturn enjoyed in Japan and Europe, it could not be salvaged. Stollar successfully convinced the company to adopt a new platform in spite of SoJ's reluctance.

SoE was a much quieter branch as it was catering to the third market. Europe loved Mega Drive and the 16-bit machine was very popular. The UK caught Playstation fever but the Saturn did well nevertheless and remained a viable platform in the UK. I understand that Saturn enjoyed more popularity on the continent. SoE's only options for content were to take whatever titles they fancied from SoA and SoJ and hence some titles were localised for Europe but not America. Furthermore, the SEGA CD And 32X were not marketed heavily in the UK and hence the general gamer population were not out buying the add-ons and getting pissed when the content did not meet expectations. Again, iirc, the 32X was an SoA brainshit.

>>3609976
>cont.

SEGA would always have released the Dreamcast but may not have released it in 1998. Maybe, if they had the breathing space, they could have delayed for a year or two before being able to come to market with a slightly more powerful, slightly more versatile machine. If the US market did not exist, it is almost certainly what would have happened. However, the release of a fundamentally flawed add-on (32X), inability to defend their market gains from the 16-bit era and failure to support add-ons and platforms forced the need for a clean break and new start in America. The company as a whole really had no option but to go for Dreamcast.

Unfortunately, this resulted in a console that was certainly more powerful than the available competition at the time but something that would be unlikely to see SEGA through the entirety of the next generation. Customers could see this as an early release console and some of the gamer alienation observed in the US began to set in the other territories. Worldwide, we all knew that SEGA would still eventually need to release another console to match the approaching Sony and Nintendo releases.

In short, this is predominantly SEGA of America's fault. They pissed off their customers, forcing the premature discontinuation of a product that was successful in other regions. This, in turn, pissed off the customers in those regions that liked Saturn and weren't ready for a new console release. Better leadership and tighter control from SoJ probably would have averted the catastrophic loss of brand loyalty that set them along a path that could only lead to exit from the console market.

>>3606998
dvd
/thread

>and a better modem for the extra push

>>3610002
>dvd
>/thread

kys asap

>>3609973
You are quite right. It is really interesting how SoJ handled their entry into the home console business.

Sega had no real established market for the Master System outside of Europe and had recently splintered from their parent company, Gulf and Western. They also recognised that they were challenging a company that held the view that there was no immediate need to upgrade their platform. Hence, there was an opportunity to introduce a product that anyone could see was technically superior and carve out a different brand identity.

In spite of this, the Mega Drive did not really enjoy success against the NES/Famicom for several years. So what did SEGA do?

They released some fucking add-ons. And not the SEGA CD or 32X. I mean the banking add-on. And the answering machine add-on.

Needless to say, they didn't achieve shit.

However, SEGA then developed some pretty exciting games and thus were able to carve a chunk out of Nintendo's pie.

They repeated the mistake with the release of the Saturn but by the time they had learned their lesson, it was too late to save the Dreamcast from doom.

>>3610002
You are aware that the DVD player on the PS2 made it very expensive to produce?

You are aware that Sony sold the PS2 hardware at a massive loss?

You are aware that the losses were not set against the Sonic Computer Entertainment but against their film production arm?

You are aware that Sony were the only company in the market who had the size to simply move losses from gaming to another part of the business?

You are aware that this was all done alongside marketing of super cheep DVDs to Japanese people so that they could establish demand for DVDs in general?

Japanese people fucking loved VHS and could see no reason to adopt DVDs until the PS2 hit the scene and was essentially the cheapest DVD player of the day.

No video game company in their right mind were going to deliver DVD players in their consoles. No way. PS2 was the only console that could natively play DVDs upon release. There is no way that the DVD player alone would have saved the DC.

>>3610020
I suppose there was the rather unusual problem of 3 different markets still liking 3 different consoles across 3 generations. That would have been a nightmare to support in terms of game development.

Dreamcast wasn't perfectly but arguably they got more right than Nintendo did with the GameCube, and the DC was more forward thinking too.

>>3607163
Learn to speak english, please.

>>3610035
>You are aware
>You are aware
>...

Oh shut up you pompis dick

>>3610035
I think a lot of people forget it's not just a matter of putting a DVD drive. For hardware of that time you also need to add an MPEG-2 decoder to the hardware. That's an additional expense.

Sony always sell hardware for a loss. Only Nintendo consistently made money on retro hardware from day 1. N64 was stupidly cheap, no drives whatsoever, only 3 major components on motherboard, cheap as fuck motherboard that only has a single memory channel. Gamecube pretty similar, only 4 major components on the board, GPU and RAM were underclocked not long before launch to make it cheaper, one of the components is ultra cheap RAM that is supposed to act like a rewritable psuedo-cartridge ROM space and is so cheap it's slower than PS1's RAM.

>>3610037
Things were settling down by the time of the Saturn, though. Sure, Saturn wasn't the best console they could've released either, but SoA's handling of the Saturn is ultimately what caused the business to fail.

>>3610047
>pompis
>Spanish for arse
>This anon just called me an arse-dick
Sometimes, you can be so wrong that you are actually right

>>3610049
This

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>>3610035
>Sonic Computer Entertainment

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>>3609312
they did it the obsolute madman

>>3607004
Holy fucking shit xD. I haven't laughed that hard in years. That's some top tier shit right there.

>>3609547
>They only mentioned graphics because there was no other way to distinguish the system at that point

They brought up graphics even back when the SNES came out (it can do 256 colours versus the Genesis doing 64), and they bring it up even today with the PS4 having more shaders and the Xbone jumping to a new upgrade to counter that.

Graphics ALWAYS matters.

>>3610297
Yea but the genesis has more resolution

>>3610327
20% more resolution in favour of 4x the colours and Mode fucking 7, man.

>>3610049
>one of the components is ultra cheap RAM that is supposed to act like a rewritable psuedo-cartridge ROM space and is so cheap it's slower than PS1's RAM.
Umm... what? The GameCube had the lowest memory latency of the generation.

>>3610520
GameCube has two types of RAM inside.

1T-SRAM which is fast and low latency (though less bandwidth than competition due to underclocking) and DRAM which is slow as shit and is best described as akin to a rewritable mass storage device ROM.

>>3610546
>DRAM is rewritable ROM
now anon, I know you like hyperboles but you have DRAM in your computer. The PS2 had DRAM. Why you spew out bullshit? The gamecube main DRAM was shit because they cut corners, simple as that.

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if the five greatest fighting games ever made couldnt save it, nothing will

>>3610585
I think you are misinterpreting my posts. I am saying it was cheap and shit.

But that was Nintendo's official justification. They said the DRAM pool on GameCube shouldn't so much viewed as RAM but as a media storage cache to help developers transition from cartridge based development.

It would have just been better to put more 1T-SRAM instead but that shit wasn't super cheap.

>>3607005
>>3607005
>implying dvds where popular before the ps2

Ps2 made dvd format successful.

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>>3607880
>DVD functionality was even briefly considered for the PS1

Playstation: 1994
DVD standard: 1995

Sources: actually looking up dates instead of listening to youtubers.

>>3611082
>It would have just been better to put more 1T-SRAM instead but that shit wasn't super cheap.
Sure it would have been better, but it wasn't really necessary. The Gamecube was already more powerful than the PS2, and could hold it's own against the Xbox. It's also not like the GameCube had a great memory bottleneck.

>>3607880
>DVD functionality was even briefly considered for the PS1.

Jesus tap-dancing Christ, you have to be a licenced retard to spout shit like that without a hint of irony.

>>3611302
>The Gamecube was already more powerful than the PS2

Wouldn't go as far to say this. PS2 overall had more raw power (GameCube's SIMD capabilities are too specialized for instance), though it was difficult to get good performance out of Sony's system due to its convoluted design. See: Sega Saturn.

>could hold it's own against the Xbox

Both PS2 and GameCube were distant from the Xbox in capability. It has a better CPU, more RAM, faster RAM in (most) cases, and a GPU considerably better than the GameCube's at everything, and better than the PS2's at everything but pure alpha blending/color shaded triangles.

>It's also not like the GameCube had a great memory bottleneck.

Virtually every developer reported that it was a serious challenge to squeeze games down from the 32 MB of RDRAM on PS2 or the 64 MB of DDR on Xbox into 24 MB of 1T-SRAM on GameCube. As mentioned above, you can't use the 16 MB of DRAM as actual RAM because it's too slow.

Arguably if GameCube had faster memory bandwidth it would have been much better at alpha blending. Many GameCube games look artistically impressive, but I can't get over the low resolution alpha textures in virtually every game.

>>3611210
>>3611308

Not the dude you responded to but sound legit.
From wiki:
>"digital video disc"[6]) is a digital optical disc storage format invented and co-developed by Sony, Philips, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995.

It makes sense they would consider equiping their console with a DVD reader.
As insiders they certainly had all they needed and we know that DVD/BR reader can give an upperhand on console market.

>>3611320
Read the rest of the Wiki. While Sony was indeed working on a new standard (MMCD, later renamed to "DVD"), the actual DVD standard that we know wasn't devised until 1995, which "ended up similar to Toshiba and Matsushita's Super Density Disc".

>>3607880 is still spouting bullshit.

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>>3606998
SEGA's problem... SEGA's problem was that they were just a little naive. They always had the superior hardware. And they were highly reputable among hardcore games. And dare i say it... they mostly had the better games too. What can go wrong? Well dear SEGA games/consoles sell on marketing alone. These days more than ever. No one fucking cares if your console is good or if your games are decent. People want to be told what to buy. That's a lesson SONY knew from the very start. Guess who still is in the hardware business and who isn't?

>>3611621
are Arcades hardware?

>>3611626
arcades are arcade hardware, consoles are consumer hardware, these days SEGA arc hw is just pc intel/nvidia crap anyway

>>3610035
You are aware you speak like faggot fucking supreme, right? Right? Right? Awareness?

Pathetic.

>>3610268
Smexy.