Innovation doesn't pay the bills. Developing in-house sports games to compete with established franchises was just another big expense when Sega could least afford it.
The Dreamcast was the (admittedly rather large) straw that broke the camel's back. Even a perfect console with a stellar launch and amazing early library would've been unlikely to right that ship after Sega's previous ineptitude and the PS2 looming on the horizon.
it was actually the right idea at the right time but that time was still the halcyon days of the late 90's before the reality of the internet boom really put things into perspective for how ill-prepared sega was for the internet era. the VMU probably killed it because all it was good for is 100%ing sega GT. if it had more than 168kb of internal memory then it might have had some long term use as some kind of internet appliance platform and early online gaming device. but it was pretty much not useful for that after like 2004 at the LATEST. the zip drive? lol. maybe.
That makes sense since Sega was banking on the American market to gain a foothold against Nintendo. Most of that cost came from likenesses from athlete endorsements, with Sega studios wanting to make the best games yet with the hardware and budget available on hand.
No James Bond. No Need for Speed. No Burnout. No Lord of the Rings. No Harry Potter. No SSX. You can whine that these games were slop, but there was no way to succeed without them.
I'm speaking within context of sports games, not just EA.
Except that Madden and NBA 2K are games purely made for retards to gamble their money away, that's pure fucking slop in it's full form.
We're talking about circa 1999, bro. None of that existed.
I know that, I'm just making the point though.
And what point was that?
So the Dreamcast only supported dial-up or DSL connections? Fair, consider that it released in 1999.
Literally the only thing that would have "saved" the dreamcast is some kind of sega 32x expansion with zip cards with a built in broadband adapter that came with a microphone headset and the last 10 years of business acumen would have told sega that was a retarded idea
If the PlayStation 2 did not exist then, maybe. Ignoring the obvious with the PS2 being the cheapest DVD player then, the Dreamcast under the hood wasn't as capable to produce dramatic, encompassing worlds. Again, it was an arcade machine in console form. Arcades were phasing out around that period.
The Dreamcast died way before a lack of such features became a serious issue. How many people even owned a network adapter for the PS2 or played an online game through its entire lifespan?
I did not even know that was a THING back then. Some games had that Sony network configuration software built in, but I never paid it any mind.
Would you say the Dreamcast was the Carole Landis of the gaming industry? Nah, I'm just kidding.
Almost nobody cared about online console gaming outside of a slim minority of enthusiast Xbox owners until the seventh gen.
I would rephrase it as online (console) gaming was just a novelty until Xbox Live pioneered it as an embedded experience. By 2005, Xbox Live reportedly amassed two million subscribers. That's not a small number to look past especially the time period. Another concession with Xbox Live to note, MS were selling Xboxes at (more of a) loss so MS needed to offset that cost however possible, henceforth an online multiplayer subscription.
fags might "but le AA and Indies", as if the current modus operandi of these spiteful shits wouldn't mean they'd drop a couple of benjamins to these studios in order to absorb them in the congealed biomass of studios and IP's in order to eliminate any potential competition, hell, if you look at the sims thread a insider have said that they have people running these analysis in order to ensure they keep their place in the sun.
And that was very good for the time, but it still only means something in the ballpark of 8% of Xbox owners were online.
When I say "embedded," I mean online (console) gaming being a practical feature FOR the console.
I'm not sure when precisely 360 games stopped putting "LIVE" on their covers, but aye, it did feel like a game was "inferior" if it didn't have some level of Xbox Live functionality.
Yeah, it blew MY mind too, finding out years later that the PS2 had a few honest-to-God MMOs available! I knew there were games with online functionality, but it was very inconsistent and varied from one game to another...and then when I was in my early 20s I found out that FFXI not only began on the PS2, it required use of a special 40GB hard drive. Phantasy Star Universe is another MMO that released for the PS2, but IDK if it required that hard drive like FFXI did.