Comment on How it felt to watch this awesome console fail back in the day
SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months agoNo one is saying Dreamcast didn’t have a great library. The problem was Sega was on the brink of financial ruin when it launched and it simply didn’t move units due to its price point, awkward timing between consoles, and as you said prior saturation with their consoles.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It was actually the opposite problem… they sold plenty of hardware. But they lost money on every sale and didn’t make it back on software purchases as was the plan.
In fact, the Dreamcast had sold more than the Xbox and Gamecube combined for the first several years of their lifespan.
DosDude@retrolemmy.com 3 months ago
There was also the playstation 2 releasing about 6 months after the dreamcast, with dvd capabilities, when dvd players were expensive as fuck. People were using them as a DVD player. Basically the same reason the playstation 3 sold decently at all in it’s first years.
DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
I’ve heard stories of people buying or being encouraged to buy a PS1 because it also played CDs.
SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
the Xbox was a financial disaster that was basically a massive loss leader by a larger company that could absorb it just to tee themselves up for next generation. Microsoft’s Xbox division was $2bill in the red when it was all said and done.
the GameCube sold the worst of all consoles the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo at 21 mill total. Xbox 24mill. You’re also cherry picking your numbers it seems to ignore Dreamcast’s final count at 9mill units sold. First years are only part of the story. The story is they did very poorly.