Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "Welcome to the next installment in our series of ‘what if‘ articles where we try to imagine a world where video game systems that under-performed actually were rousing successes. Last week we took a look at Sega’s 32-bit disaster, the Saturn and for this week… we’re picking on them again. But to be fair, the story of Sega’s final video game console is a lot sadder and less frustrating than the Saturn’s as the Dreamcast was seriously designed with players in mind and was an extremely innovative system in its own right. Unfortunately, the writing was already on the wall and despite a nearly flawless launch and great game lineup the Dreamcast ended up being just that, a fleeting dream. But what if it could have reached its full potential? What kind of world could we be gaming in today?"
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Sega should have just stuck it out instead of pulling out, but it is still getting games to this day so that has to account for something. The homebrew and indie scene are keeping the dream alive and making it more of a success than it was.
Well it will always be a success to me as 2 of my best games ever made were created on it Shenmue 1 and 2.
if sega stayed and managed to keep dreamcast around for 7 year cycle i think we would have seen another sega console and the dreamcast didnt have to win against the ps2 but could have beaten the xbox and gamecube in its generation sega had top notch game for dreamcast sadley people didnt get beyond it and supported it now look at sega these days they own more ip then microsoft sega need to return microsoft can bow out because they will never be the level of sega
Dreamcast wouldn’t have even lasted long in the 6th gen anyway with its lack of a second analog stick, disc with lower storage space than the competition, and far weaker hardware than the competition.
“Unfortunately for all its future thinking (the Dreamcast had a built-in modem) it still used CD’s as its media of choice.”
No it didn’t. The Dreamcast used the GD-ROM for its format of games, which has a a 42% increase over a conventional CD's capacity of 700 megabytes.
“The PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube were all primarily game systems whose innovations were mostly tied to gameplay and not trying to be more than dedicated consoles.”
Lolwut. That description only applies to GameCube. The PS2 was a multimedia device that allowed you to play DVD movies and listen to music on it from a CD. Xbox also let you watch DVDs but it needed an accessory to do so and it even allowed you to burn music form CDs to its HDD. Sony and Microsoft always marketed their systems as more than just gaming machines.
“However if the Dreamcast had been a success its possible Microsoft would have kept this idea alive and eventually purchased Sega outright, especially if the Dreamcast had been a bigger hit than the Xbox. That means we could have gotten a console that, hypothetically had all of Sega’s IPs like Sonic, Phantasy Star and Crazy Taxi as well as Microsoft’s franchises like Halo AND Rare’s IPs.”
That would’ve be a very grim turn for gaming. Many of Sega’s franchises don’t perform well on Xbox, and we wouldn’t get any of their modern franchises like Valkyria Chronicles or Yakuza.
Plus Microsoft may not even have felt the need to buy Bungie and Rare if they had Sega under their thumb.
“This combined with Sega’s established support from company’s like Namco and Capcom and Microsoft’s relationship with folks like EA and Activision and it’s not unreasonable to imagine that the PlayStation 2 could have had some serious competition if not an outright rival for domination during this generation.”
EA wouldn’t return to a Sega system period after what happened with Saturn. Microsoft was able to foster a relationship with them and Activision because they weren’t connected to Sega.
Plus Sony has better relationships with Namco and Capcom than Sega ever did as well as EA and Activision, so their PS2 still wouldn’t be threatened.
“Ever since Sega bowed out of the console race in 2002”
Sega left the hardware market in March 31, 2001 which is eve before GameCube and Xbox hit the market.
“However, if just a few things had been different the Dreamcast could have been an absolute beast and competed rightfully with not only the Xbox and GameCube but maybe even the lord of all gaming, the PlayStation 2.”
Not a few things, a lot of things would drastically have to be different for it to seriously compete with those consoles. Plus Sega was still suffering from the baggage that the Saturn’s botched launch had caused them to the point some major publishers and retailers wouldn’t stock their future devices.