Dreamcast at 25: How Sega’s ultimate console was one in all gaming’s most stunning failures

How do you recuperate from three flops in a row? Not an issue when you’re a excessive jumper – it’s actually your job – however when you’re a online game {hardware} producer, that you must discover success ultimately or one thing’s going to have to present.

This was the disaster confronted by Sega because it discovered itself in third place in an trade the place, simply half a decade earlier, it was main Nintendo in some areas and offering sturdy competitors in others. Now, after promoting solely 2.24 million Mega CD / Sega CD add-ons for its Mega Drive / Genesis, then a reasonably terrible 800,000 32X add-ons, Sega was preventing a dropping battle with the Saturn.

It may excuse the Mega CD and 32X gross sales as a result of these add-ons have been at all times designed to easily extend the Mega Drive’s life whereas Sega labored on its subsequent correct successor.

However the Saturn was that successor, and following a disastrous “shock, it’s out right now” launch within the US that caught gamers off-guard and infuriated unsuspecting retailers, the console simply by no means managed to seek out traction within the west and, with round 9.2 million items bought, ended up a distant third behind the Nintendo 64 (32.9 million) and the overwhelmingly dominant newcomer, the Sony PlayStation (102.4 million).

In mid-1997, with Sega proudly owning simply 12% of the console market, Sega of America president Bernie Stolar said in the course of the E3 video games conference that “the Saturn just isn’t our future”. In March 1998, Sega of America then declared that it was discontinuing the Saturn lower than three years into its life so it may deal with its next-generation console.

It was a daring technique that threatened to harass much more individuals – the gamers who owned a Saturn, the builders who had Saturn video games in growth, the retailers with Saturn inventory it nonetheless wanted to promote – however Sega’s plan was clear: get a giant head-start on the following era by releasing its subsequent console lengthy earlier than Sony and Nintendo launch theirs (the techniques that might ultimately turn out to be the PS2 and GameCube).

For its subsequent system, Sega turned to IBM and requested it to work on a prototype for subsequent era console {hardware}. With the codename Black Belt, this prototype used graphics know-how created by US firm 3dfx Interactive.

Sad to listen to that Sega was doubtlessly outsourcing its new console growth to a US third celebration, Sega of Japan’s head of {hardware} growth Hideki Sata bought his staff to begin work on a prototype of their very own, codenamed Katana.

Ultimately, Sega would resolve that Katana can be the prototype it might press forward with, and after settling a doubtlessly messy lawsuit with 3dfx (which claimed Sega had promised to make use of its tech and was now abandoning it), it was full pace forward on the Saturn’s successor.

The console would additionally get a brand new title, Dreamcast: a reputation that conjured up visions of graphics so spectacular they may solely be imagined, in addition to its on-line (i.e. broadcast) capabilities.

The Dreamcast was certainly an enormous step up from the PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo 64 when it comes to energy and efficiency. Relying on the scenario the console was able to delivering something as much as 6-7 million polygons per second, in comparison with 360,000 on the PlayStation, and will output at 480p, the very best decision potential on a regular definition TV on the time.

What’s extra, the console’s processing energy meant much more of its video games ran at 60 frames per second, one thing that was rarer when it got here to polygonal video games on the PlayStation, N64 and Saturn.

In a intelligent transfer, Sega additionally determined to make it in order that the Dreamcast’s {hardware} can be architecturally just like that of its Naomi arcade board. Though the Naomi had further reminiscence, this nonetheless meant that it was pretty easy for builders of Naomi-based arcade video games to then port them to the Dreamcast, making the console an distinctive source of close to arcade-quality titles.

Having essentially the most visually spectacular graphics of any house console by far was one factor, however the Dreamcast’s legacy as an alternative lay with the groundwork it set when it got here to on-line connectivity.

Each Dreamcast console got here with its personal built-in modem (33.3Kbps in Japan, 56Kbps within the west), which could possibly be related to the telephone line and used to not solely browse the web by the console (at a time when not everybody had a PC that permit them achieve this), but in addition compete in opposition to different gamers in some video games and even obtain the occasional DLC for his or her video games.

The online searching was fundamental, the multiplayer lag was frequent and the DLC was tiny, however the seeds had been planted, and although the PS2 and GameCube would launch with out on-line options, Microsoft’s Xbox – stated by some to be the pure successor to the Dreamcast – would ultimately launch Xbox Reside and proceed the place Sega had left off.

“The online searching was fundamental, the multiplayer lag was frequent and the DLC was tiny, however the seeds had been planted, and although the PS2 and GameCube would launch with out on-line options, Microsoft’s Xbox – stated by some to be the pure successor to the Dreamcast – would ultimately launch Xbox Reside and proceed the place Sega had left off.”

Sega additionally tried to innovate with its reminiscence card: profiting from the recognition of the Tamagotchi and different digital pets, its Dreamcast reminiscence card – the Visible Reminiscence Unit, or VMU – had a built-in display screen. This allowed gamers to see info whereas they performed, then after they have been executed they may unplug the VMU and use it to play fundamental mini-games on the transfer.

The Dreamcast launched on November 27, 1998 in Japan, September 9, 1999 in North America (permitting for a well-known 9/9/99 advertising marketing campaign) and October 14, 1999 within the UK. Regardless of getting off to a robust begin and providing a wholesome number of implausible video games, nonetheless, the Dreamcast was at all times trying over its shoulder.

The PlayStation 2 was coming in 2000 and promised to be much more highly effective than Sega’s console, leaving it in an odd form of intergenerational limbo the place it was too highly effective to be thought-about a part of the Saturn / PlayStation / N64 era, however not highly effective sufficient to be a part of the eventual PS2 / GameCube / Xbox era. It was in its personal little area of interest: a distinct segment with a top quality library of arcade-like video games and a devoted fanbase, however a distinct segment nonetheless.

It quickly turned clear that the Dreamcast, whereas spectacular, wasn’t going to have the ability to compete with Sony’s new powerhouse, and that after the GameCube arrived in 2001 it was prone to fall even additional behind. Deciding that the reply to the query “how do you recuperate from three flops in a row” was “we don’t”, and realising it was struggling financially, Sega determined to chop its losses.

On 31 January 2001 – lower than 16 months after the console had arrived in North America – Sega introduced that it was discontinuing the Dreamcast, and can be restructuring the corporate to now not make consoles, and as an alternative turn out to be a “platform-agnostic” third-party sport developer.

The Dreamcast Encyclopedia

The lead to hindsight was most likely the proper one: slightly than pumping extra money into the Dreamcast and doubtlessly going bankrupt, Sega as an alternative continues to get pleasure from success as a developer a long time later.

The Dreamcast could have been a failure on paper, but it surely’s no shock that lots of the 9.13 million individuals who purchased it think about it one of many biggest consoles of all time, primarily because of the high quality of its quite a few unique video games.