I don't agree with Moore's assessment on why the Dreamcast for Dreamcasted.
- Sega was bleeding cash. Poor decision after poor decision kept shortening the days that company could survive, and the DC was widely known to be the last-ditch effort to remain viable in the console sector. They biffed that one hard due to:
- The console was underpowered against the PS2 and GC. Moore, probably correctly, thought that the best chance to beat Sony and Nintendo in a generation was to launch before both, and build a userbase. As a result, the DC was the 3rd most powerful system. It showed in almost all of its games. This didn't require FUD to be seen, you just needed a pair of functioning eyeballs. Among enthusiasts, that early launch amounted to nothing, as many of us waited to see what Sony and Nintendo were bringing to the table. Both shattered the Dreamcast's best efforts, and this was at a time where each iteration in graphics tech brought noticeable improvements. That early launch didn't sell nearly enough systems to stave off the inevitable beatdown that ensued. It also wasn't helped by:
- The games just weren't cutting it. A strong library of arcade hits, like Sega Rally and VF4, weren't faithfully replicated on the home console. Whether it was their irrational desire to hold onto the floundering arcade business, or just plain stupidity (I'd say it was a mix of both), they made home hardware that couldn't run the arcade games at full beans. I believe the arcade units were the equivalent of 2 DCs running in parallel. This meant that they were losing money on a rapidly shrinking arcade business, and not making any of it up with subpar home ports. Compare that to Sony who had the Tekken and Time Crisis franchises replicated extremely well by the home console. The arcade boards Namco was using for their games were much closer to the home consoles than what Sega was using for their arcade games. On top of that, Sega seemed to hinge all their hopes on a boondoggle of a Yu Suzuki vanity project, Shenmue, when they should have just told the old codger to shutup and make another Virtua Fighter. Just stupid decision after stupid decision.
Sega was a poorly-run company. Looking at them today, I feel like that still holds true. They haven't leveraged the things that have made them great in the past, their arcade library. Instead of turning into a hit-making software company (something Nintendo could do with incredible ease), they've turned into an also-ran developer that many on here think will be bought out any day now. Peter Moore's claims ring hollow if you lived through the Saturn and DC eras, which weren't all that different. The DC was a more competent attempt than the Saturn, but didn't reap much better rewards for the company.
I don't expect Moore to admit that the company he helmed completely blew it, and tripped over their own feet 2 generations in a row. Hell, for all I know, he was beholden to incompetents in the Japanese office, who couldn't get out of their own way when trying to compete against a rapidly strengthening juggernaut in Sony. However, I don't believe for a second that Sony killed the DC through FUD. There was simply no need for it. You also didn't see the GC meet a similar fate, and it came out after the PS2 was able to hit the ground running. The GC wasn't all the impressive technologically either, but it had what the DC did not, strong and smart management, and a solid library of exclusives. It's why Nintendo was able to easily exit the technology arms race, and still continue to be profitable with less-powerful hardware. They make games. They make fun games. No amount of FUD can detract from that.
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