re: Why was the Dreamcast not successful?

I was a big Sega fan back in the day and bought a Dreamcast a few weeks after it launched. I also started working at Electronics Boutique not long after the PS2 launch, leading into the launch of the Gamecube and Xbox.

It failed for a lot of reasons:
- Sega had lost consumer confidence with the Sega CD, 32X, CDX, and Saturn. Also, rumors of yet another system during the Saturn's life span, the Sega Neptune, didn't help matters.

- Sega was in a lot of debt from the failure of the Saturn (which launched nearly unannounced and at a higher price point than the Playstation.)

- It was discovered less than a year after the Dreamcast's launch the games were very easy to pirate with no hardware hacks. Games on Sega's proprietary format, the GD-ROM, could be made to fit on to CD-ROM's by simply down sampling game audio and videos, but that was only required when a game was taking up most of the GD-ROM's space. Many games were small enough to fit on a CD-ROM with no modifications.

- Consumer broadband Internet was on the rise too, which made the distribution of these pirated ISO's far easier than previous console generations.

- The Playstation was still selling well and the N64 was still doing fine with their exclusive titles. Not to mention there were rumors flying around of the next generation of systems hitting soon - the PS2 and Nintendo Dolphin, not to mention talks that Microsoft might be entering the console gaming space.

And I really think the last reason, the PS2, was the main reason the Dreamcast failed. The Playstaion brand was hot. It was the "NES" for the next generation. Everyone was clamoring for a sequel system and were still getting value out of the PS1 due to its vast catalog of games. DVD was on the rise and when the PS2 launched it was both an affordable DVD player (the first DVD player for many families) AND it played loads of great games. Don't forget it ALSO played PS1 games. So, even if you were an N64 owner who skipped out on the PS1, you could catch up on the games you missed while also picking up the latest PS2 games.

My dad went and bought me a ps2 right away when he heard it played dvds

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I'm so thankful that as a gaming community we've moved past feeling superior to one another because of the platform we've chosen to play our video games on. Now I can spend more energy making fun of my friends who subscribe to Amazon Prime over Netflix

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It's most likely Powerstone 2, that game is so much fun.

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They're two different things.

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They are. Very true. 2 different things that overlap in some ways and have their strengths and weaknesses in others. After looking at it in that light I realize it's probably a waste of time to berate people who may choose one over the other or can't afford both.

(Also, I went ahead and added a sarcasm tag to my previous post.)

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Also, rumors of yet another system during the Saturn's life span, the Sega Neptune, didn't help matters.

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Have you ever played or heard of the Neptunia series? It's a collaboration effort with Sega and couple of tiny Japanese devs. It's a parody of the gaming industry with platforms and devs being represented by characters. There's one for Sony, Nintendo, and MS. Sega's console is called Neptune.

The N64 is one of the best consoles ever made. It didn't have a huge library, but it featured some of the greatest games of all time. Quantity doesn't always equal quality. Everyone understands this, which is why no one agrees with you.

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Quantity doesn't always equal quality. Everyone understands this, which is why no one agrees with you.

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I'm talking about quality. There are way more hours of unique great gaming on those other systems than on the 64. It's not the number of games. The number of good/great games is important though. It's how much fun you can get out of it and for how long. You can get more from every other Nintendo console except VB.

That generation certainly started the trend that continued with Nintendo systems. The funny thing is that the playstation was supposed to be a part of Nintendo but the deal went south.