"The Wrong Console Won" - Dreamcast Is Getting Its Own Rave Event "To Correct The Record"

I've always wanted DJ Yoda to do something like this. He does reference videogames on his 80s Mix tape, but a full standalone mix and live show would be awesome. He's still touring (has done a history of hip hop set in 2024) so it's possible...!

The Dreamcast is going to have a second wind in the next few years. I never experienced it the first time around, I've deliberately avoided playing anything on ROMs etc. always with the plan to properly get stuck into it one day. That day is getting close.

No lies detected! The Dreamcast really was my favourite console of that generation by far.

@RetroGames
The title of this article is in quotation marks. So it is an article about somebody else's opinion. It's not really clickbait.

Dreamcast fanboys always have to crap on the PS2 instead of promoting what is good about the Dreamcast. Which is ridiculous as the PS2 is the greatest console of all time.

The Dreamcast failed solely due to Sega's mistakes. Just think. The GameCube was profitable that generation despite launching a year after the PS2.

I love my Dreamcast, it was the first time I ever got a console on launch day. I have so many memories playing it, and will keep playing it until I die, but this "wrong console won" narrative is complete nonsense.

Dreamcast deserved better, yes, but its not like PlayStation 2 cheated for a victory, it earned its place in history because it was absolutely amazing, packed with so many high quality masterpieces. Yeah it has its issues such as muddy video output, but it doesn't matter when the games are so good and plentiful.

Promoting, and loving the Dreamcast is awesome, but having to hate on another console to do so is ignorant and childish. It reminds me of people who insult one woman's appearance in order to praise another woman's appearance. Shameful and unnecessary.

I'll repeat the sentiment expressed in some of the other comments here. The Dreamcast is a brilliant console with so much to dive in to. So much innovation, so much creativity, etc. It was and still is a great console, and has forever made its mark on the video game industry in spite of its poor sales. However, as much as the Dreamcast is incredibly likeable, I do think it is probably worse than all three of the GameCube, the Xbox, and the PS2. The Dreamcast was awesome, but in my opinion these other three were even a step above. Not at all a shot against the Dreamcast, again I think it is a brilliant console, but rather it's a testament to how amazing the 6th generation was as a whole.

@UK_Kev Where's your source that the GaneCube was profitable for Nintendo? The console was sold at a loss and got deep discounts through the generation, and obviously it sold poorly. Nintendo was saved by handheld sales and Pokémon. XBox almost certainly was also a loss for Microsoft, but it created a brand that would become very successful, so that probably counts as a win.

I think Sega did a lot of things very right when it came to the Dreamcast, but their public perception and limited cash reserves hurt them. Also hype for PS2 was immense. I wonder if Sega holding the launch outside Japan for almost a year was a mistake, and it probably was. Yes, it came out of the gate with a lot of great software, but it lost a year of building an install base before PS2 sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

For me, the Dreamcast is the best console of that generation. There is nothing wrong with celebrating the dreamcast, and I feel like the "wrong console won" thing is tongue in cheek. While I obviously wish things had gone differently, I enjoyed a ton of ps2 games. It had the third party support that generation.

The only people who believe "the wrong console won" are people who want to repeal Article 9.

Hey, John Harrison, how ya doin'?

@no_donatello
"The console was sold at a loss and got deep discounts through the generation, and obviously it sold poorly."

The more expensive to manufacture PS2 was reduced to just £100/$100 in 2002. That generation, all consoles were discounted in a short space of time.

The GC had an attachment rate of nearly 10 games for every console sold. The highest attachment rate of any Nintendo console at the time. (I don't know if that is still the case.)

"Where's your source that the GaneCube was profitable for Nintendo?"

I have never read a source that said otherwise. A quick Google search of 'GameCube profitable' states I'm right. Maybe you could state a source that says otherwise.

Microsoft lost $4bn on their first console. But they expected to lose money that gen. The Xbox was still a success as it succeeded in creating a foothold in the gaming market. That was their target for the OG Xbox.

Dreamcast sales were never going to take off until the 5th gen console owners were ready to move on. Xmas 2001 was the time when most gamers were ready to buy into the next gen. But the lack of money resulted in Dreamcast failing in early 2001. If Sega had the money for another year, the Dreamcast would likely have done GC numbers. Remember, if the Dreamcast had survived, GTAIII would have been on the Dreamcast at the same time as the PS2 version.

The reason the PS2 won was the DVD playback.
If Sega had invested in that and not given the operating system to Windows CE, we would have no XBox and SEGA would still be around in the console world

@Bunkerneath
During Xmas 2000, Sega sold a bundle of a Dreamcast console and a DVD player for £300. The same price as a PS2. It made no difference.

@Bunkerneath You nailed it. A lot of PS2s got bought as DVD players, it made a lot of sense. Standalone DVD players still cost a decent chunk of change at the time, spend a little more AND you get a new game console? Easy sell for most people.
The 6th gen was kind of a repeat of the 4th gen to me, in that you couldn't buy a bad console. PS2, GC, DC, and Xbox all kicked ass, just like how the SNES, Genesis, and TG16 were all great machines. I do feel like the Dreamcast tends to get overhyped a little, but that's a pretty natural response to how it got cut down in its prime, I think. I would have liked to have seen how it fared trying to keep pace with the big three over the full generation, but the stuff we did get is good enough that it deserves a spot in anyone's collection.

@no_donatello I've also thought that the long gap between the Japanese and North American launches may have hurt them for the reasons you mention. I think there were some unfortunate issues that would have made that difficult. First, they did need time to build up the hype for the machine, as they did in 1999. I do recall reports at the time that they had difficulty producing enough units stemming from yield issues with the GPU. They may have needed the time to build up a reasonable stock for the NA launch. I sometimes wonder if they should have tried to launch in NA first, as that is the territory that needed it. That might have hurt the brand in Japan. It would have lengthened game development for launch, maybe not by too much for the arcade-style games, since they would have to be localized before the system was available. That's a more minor issue, but it could also have added months to development time. There may also have been the belief then that they had to launch between September and December in NA and that may simply have not been possible if they did launch earlier. It's hard to say for sure without knowing more. I do think the Dreamcast would have still had a very successful NA launch at $250 as SoJ wanted. The guy in charge went rogue as I recall and announced the launch price at $200 at a time when Sega didn't need to bleed more cash than necessary.

The DVD aspect of the PS2 no doubt helped significantly, but the strength of the Sony Playstation brand going into that generation was the main factor for the system's early success. Both Sega and Nintendo made things easy for Sony. Sony also was notorious for a bit of hyperbole at various points to keep potential customers from defecting to other consoles while waiting for the new system. But the Dreamcast launched so early that it was somewhat caught between two generations. It was a significant jump over the PS1 and N64 and it had a respectable polygon output compared even to the Model 3 boards, but Sony's market position and that extra time they had allowed them to have much higher potential polygon output, so it was a legitimate reason to wait. That may not have been apparent in the early games, and the Dreamcast may have had superior graphical features and image quality in some ways, but the potential was there and would definitely be realized. I've played Tenchu 3 and Tenchu Fatal Shadows(the real Tenchu 4, in my opinion) on both PS2 and PSP and the cutbacks for the PSP version, which is still a good version, make me think that's what a Dreamcast version might have looked like in a lot of ways.

@UK_Kev My Google searches for GameCube profitability seem mixed. I'm not sure how financial reporting in Japan works, but it does seem like we get less information out of Nintendo than, say, Microsoft or Sony. I know that Nintendo is famously thrifty (sometimes to their detriment, like launching the 3DS for $250 and then having to massively cut the price), so maybe they managed to pull off a small profit from the GameCube, though I kind of doubt it. Like I said, GBA and Pokemon sold like gangbusters, so they could weather a failing home console better than Sega.

Sega always thought getting to the game early was the way to go, as if people wouldn't see the next big shiny thing and want it more. Didn't help that they were in debt so much

The only thing I think that could have saved it is if they would have collaborated more with Microsoft and made a more powerful system from the start that held both brand names. Might have kept them out of the console war and left room. 4 systems in a generation has never worked.

PS2 won because it focused on deeper and more complex games that the era demanded. Arcades were dying. Porting coin ops to the home to enjoy two minute spurts of gameplay were no longer as desirable as they had been. Gamers expected to sit down and get immersed in a deep title that gave them 20 hours of story or 50 hours of gameplay progression. That's why PS2 won. Not because Dreamcast was incapable of this, but because PS2 was much better at delivering this prevailing trend of home gaming. Sega's arcade greatness killed their home console.

The title opinion was definitely from something not thinking very rationally.
Sega was struggling against Nintendo and Sony for the latter part of the '90s. For various reasons of Sega's doing.
Did the author think they could win making Microsoft's seemingly infinite cash another adversary? (despite that Microsoft I recall did have some involvement in the DC)

@SonicTheKidd
The Dreamcast Launched in 1998. Microsoft decided to get into the console market in 1999.
@KingMike
May 21st 1998
"Microsoft Corp. today announced it will collaborate with Sega Enterprises Ltd. on Sega's new Dreamcast home video game system, slated for release in Japan on Nov. 20, 1998, and in the rest of the world in 1999. As a result of the collaboration, Microsoft will provide an optimized version of the Microsoft® Windows® CE operating system with integrated DirectX® services as the operating system for use with Dreamcast. With the inclusion of Windows CE, Dreamcast will bring the benefits of an advanced Windows-based development environment to the world of console game development for the first time. Using Windows CE, developers will be able to create cross-platform titles more efficiently by taking advantage of well-established Win32® and DirectX APIs that are source-code-compatible with the Windows operating system on the PC. Incorporation of DirectX will also allow the Dreamcast system to capitalize on the momentum toward PC gaming and the ever-increasing body of developers creating games for the Windows platform."

@Bunkerneath the dvd functionality boosted the ps2 sales.... as at the time (just like the ps3) there were folks that got a ps2 purely for the DVD playback feature.... I'd be willing to bet more like ⅓ of the sales those first years were all purely for movies.... the xbox or dream cast didn't have a chance to compare them.

There could of been better ways then to celebrate by doing a party. But I did love my DC and Sonic Adventures and Crazy Taxi.

@RejectedAng3L The value proposition was huge. Imagine if the original NES could play VHS tapes. It was basically on that level

@Starless
Article 9?

@profkross well I mean the Famicom did have both a tape and floppy drives.... so it wasn't too far off base or farfetched of a thought.

We never got all of that.... hackers... lol

It would be a parallel universe we would be talking about these days had any of that happened.

@RejectedAng3L Not released in America despite those had to have been in the works as their plan to rework the hardware into a home computer.
They had to have thought was going to be a better entry going into the 1984 US gaming market.

That and also cartridge hardware very quickly caught up to much of the FDS' advantages (aside from cheaper game prices, which was understandably a very divisive point for game publishers).

@KingMike that's why I said Famicom and not NES.... they may have shared a lot of games... and maybe even the same button layout. But both were treated as very separate machines and markets....

Quit reminding me that I would kill for an official Dreamcast Mini