Dear Master Malstrom,
I wanted to ask you what you think of the Sega Dreamcast library. I’ve heard so many people over the years go on and on about how AMAZING the Dreamcast games were, and I was wondering if you agree. Personally, I’ve always thought that the games were highly overrated (although I do love Samba De Amigo). Also, Sega has ported many of these games to other consoles, and I don’t think any have sold all that well. If Sega hadn’t run out of money, do you think the games were good enough to make the Dreamcast a success?
Dreamcast has a huge amount of respect from Nintendo. The games are very innovative and interesting compared to the homogenous AAA bore fest we have today.
Have you ever heard the saying that you can sell every magazine you make and still go out of business? Sega was genius at game making back in the day. Sega could go up against Nintendo. But Sega’s genius did not apply to business. Nintendo does have business genius which is why this page exists in the first place.
I don’t think the Dreamcast could ever become a success because of Sega’s business ways. Sega didn’t get destroyed based off of a bad generation or fluke; Sega never did the console business well. Even in the salad days of the 16-bit era, Sega made monstrous mistakes such as all the hardware revisions and add-ons (32x, etc.). Before U.S. Congress, Sega ineptly defended itself against Nintendo.
I think your question is inverted. The question is not about the craftsmanship of Sega’s games about Sega’s console business viability. The question is Sega’s business side.
I think it is an indicator of the games’ quality that they were able to keep the business confused Sega afloat as long as it did. The business problems were a hole in the boat. Despite the games’ momentum, eventually the boat was going to sink.
Some of Sega’s Dreamcast ports sold well, I believe. Keep in mind that port sales aren’t a good indicator because when you move a game to another platform it wasn’t intended for, the experience is different.
Sega, at least, had the advantage of good marketing. Do you want to know of a game company that made first party console software, had bad business sense, and it had bad marketing, but it made BRILLIANT games? Hudson.
We need more talk about Hudson and the PC-Engine/Turbografx 16. Brilliant system and games. Since my parameter of quality is replayability and ‘coming back to the game’, the Turbografx 16 is probably the better console out of the 16-bit generation.
Above: The lost continent of the 16-bit Generation