Why did EA officially snub the Dreamcast system?

[tz101]

I've read that 3rd parties steered clear due to piracy fears. I am new to the DC scene, so educate me: Are games that easily copied for the system? I thought Sega used a proprietary giga-disk media for the DC. Also, is it the lack of support from EA and other big name developers that spelled the death knell for this awesome system?

[TripMercy]

Well the reason that third party developers didn't want to get involved with the Dreamcast was because of how quick SEGA was to drop support for it's previous systems. The 32X was a disaster, the SEGA CD would have been great had it come out maybe a year and a half earlier than it did, however it came out just a year before the Saturn so SEGA dropped support of everything that wasn't the Saturn. This caused some third party companies to lose a bit of cash. Well the Saturn outsold the PlayStation for the first six months but due to an early release date only had a handful of titles during this time. That caused the PlayStation to take over the market. There were a number of things that SEGA could have done better with the Saturn, but unfortunately they just didn't handle it properly and support for the wonderful SEGA Saturn was dropped. Third party companies, most notably EA started to notice a trend with SEGA's home console business and decided not to invest in the system. Don't get me wrong the Saturn was not a complete failure it did well in Europe and Japan, it simply underperformed. So that forced SEGA to make a majority of the Dreamcast's games. With the ease of piracy (yes it is EXTREMELY easy to pirate DC games) the sales of games didn't make up the difference for the money being bled out all over the Dreamcast. There were 10 million Dreamcast units sold initially. Only 1 million units of Sonic Adventure were sold. However, you KNOW everyone who owned a Dreamcast was playing Sonic Adventure. SEGA just wasn't making the money, in fact by 2001 they had lost millions of Japanese Yen and were bankrupt. Which pretty much led to SEGA being bought out and forming a merger with Sammy. Ever since then they have made software only, and these days they actually make a profit similar to the profit they made during the days of the Saturn. Hopefully they can continue to grow, and who knows they might get cheeky and return to the console business but I wouldn't bank on it. Just like EA will never make their own console, business is just too good the way things are to risk it over something as silly as a console. As long as people still play SEGA's games, what does SEGA care what console they are on? After all, SEGA started out making pinball machines and moved on to arcade games. Their first console games were not on their own consoles but SEGA was a third party developer. They just had to start back from square one and are getting back on their feet again. Keep loving SEGA and maybe one day they will reward all of us (you know I would just be happy with Shenmue 3 I don't even need a new SEGA console, I just need Shenmue 3).

[Favrenation]

About the GD-Rom though, the disk was a cd but the groves were closer together so it could hold about 1.2 gigs or somewhere in there. But since it was still basically a cd the system could read cd-r discs which caused a lot of piracy. Even though the gd-rom could hold 1.2 gigs almost none of the games were that size becuase it was still too early for devolopers to take full advantage of the size of the cd. The later models like the sega sports dreamcast addition were sold with a broadband adapter and would not read cd-r but it was too late by then becuase the hype of the ps2 made the dreamcast lose sales.

[Neoblast]

EA wanted to have monopoly on the sports games on dreamcast.... or el se they wouldnt code games for the dreamcast.
Sega said no because actually they bought a few studios for making their own sports games, then EA pissed off and didnt make any games for the dc.
This was shown on one of the last peter ( traitor ahem ahem ) moore's interviews...

[hydroMorphoneMat]

Pretty much what they said...

And I grew up in this time, only thing I remember is, I only saw ads for ps1 and dreamcast... Didnt know shit about saturn till my neighbor had it. Then I was like "what country did you get that from..." as i was rocking the genesis still, and 32x.

And I think sega football games were pretty bad ass tho, they still get a good rep if you look around..

[Gary_b]

The later models like the sega sports dreamcast addition were sold with a broadband adapter and would not read cd-r but it was too late by then becuase the hype of the ps2 made the dreamcast lose sales.

um what? i have a sega sports dreamcast and it did not come with the broadband adapter, also it can play CD-rs. so both of those seem to be wrong. maybe your talking about some super secret sega sports models DC? i know Japan had a black Dreamcast and some of them had a BBA but not all of them. i forget what it was called.

[Favrenation]

Srry I got that one mixed up. I just assume a black dreamcast is that model. Yeah thats the japanese model that also doesnt play cd-rs. Thanks for the heads up. There should be a "history of dreamcast" section on the page. That may clear up some questions to new comers.

[cOcOoO]

Well the reason that third party developers didn't want to get involved with the Dreamcast was because of how quick SEGA was to drop support for it's previous systems. The 32X was a disaster, the SEGA CD would have been great had it come out maybe a year and a half earlier than it did, however it came out just a year before the Saturn so SEGA dropped support of everything that wasn't the Saturn. This caused some third party companies to lose a bit of cash. Well the Saturn outsold the PlayStation for the first six months but due to an early release date only had a handful of titles during this time. That caused the PlayStation to take over the market. There were a number of things that SEGA could have done better with the Saturn, but unfortunately they just didn't handle it properly and support for the wonderful SEGA Saturn was dropped. Third party companies, most notably EA started to notice a trend with SEGA's home console business and decided not to invest in the system. Don't get me wrong the Saturn was not a complete failure it did well in Europe and Japan, it simply underperformed. So that forced SEGA to make a majority of the Dreamcast's games. With the ease of piracy (yes it is EXTREMELY easy to pirate DC games) the sales of games didn't make up the difference for the money being bled out all over the Dreamcast. There were 10 million Dreamcast units sold initially. Only 1 million units of Sonic Adventure were sold. However, you KNOW everyone who owned a Dreamcast was playing Sonic Adventure. SEGA just wasn't making the money, in fact by 2001 they had lost millions of Japanese Yen and were bankrupt. Which pretty much led to SEGA being bought out and forming a merger with Sammy. Ever since then they have made software only, and these days they actually make a profit similar to the profit they made during the days of the Saturn. Hopefully they can continue to grow, and who knows they might get cheeky and return to the console business but I wouldn't bank on it. Just like EA will never make their own console, business is just too good the way things are to risk it over something as silly as a console. As long as people still play SEGA's games, what does SEGA care what console they are on? After all, SEGA started out making pinball machines and moved on to arcade games. Their first console games were not on their own consoles but SEGA was a third party developer. They just had to start back from square one and are getting back on their feet again. Keep loving SEGA and maybe one day they will reward all of us (you know I would just be happy with Shenmue 3 I don't even need a new SEGA console, I just need Shenmue 3).

*claps*