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[SkylineRKR]

No, the Dreamcast started very unstable, in Japan its initial games were poorly received and in the West after 3 months of frantic sales, game sales were not keeping up and Sega needed to sell games to recover the subsidy costs. The board decided to release several games that today would be AAA at the same time, sales did not react, so they made successive price cuts, in September 2000 the Dreamcast was in the ICU, the following 3 months sales were extremely low, at the time of greater flow of consumers.

Peter Moore was right, the Dreamcast was already dead he just made it official.

Dreamcast had a good US launch, and that was pretty much everything. In summer 2000, which was like 9 months post launch, the console was already fading away. I remember there was a small increased demand when the console was hacked but it was pretty much over already. The back end of 2000 saw some good games that I feel simply came out too late. Shenmue for example came out at the back end of 2000, while it was released in Japan in 1999 already. MSR came out at this time too, and managed to sell only approx 120k copies (with about 13k sold in Europe). By then the console was already on life support.

Effectively it died within a year of presence in the west. But during 2001 some very good games actually still found a release esp. in PAL territories, culminating with Shenmue 2 which I pre ordered and picked up late 2001. I was sort of sad, knowing Sega as a console maker was finished.

 

[Esppiral]

Cool now compare Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and you'll see the generational leap between both consoles

 

[Romulus]

Cool now compare Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and you'll see the generational leap between both consoles

Yeah when the multiplatform games began to push that generation, xbox showed its ceiling was way higher. There's the odd game here and there that looks better on the other consoles but there are also bad ports. Almost every last visually stunning game that generation was either better on Xbox or they didn't even attempt it on ps2/GC despite the bigger install base on ps2. ID and Valve both said they couldn't get their games running on the other consoles. They are many more examples.

 

[cartman414]

What baffles me about Dreamcast is its relative failure in Japan.

It was the only country where the Saturn found any success, and a lot of that was down to the popularity of Virtua Fighter, especially in 1994.

Dreamcast launched with Virtua Fighter 3 which looked incredible in 1998, but they didn’t go for it. Yes the launch lineup was minuscule, but so was the Saturn’s.

The Saturn's Japanese success was the real outlier. It was the only time Sega really focused on their home turf. Their prior consoles were merely home extensions of their arcade wing. Sonic's success really caught them with their pants down.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

The Sega Saturn sold well in Japan 5.8M ahead of the N64, Genesis and GC, consoles that sold more than it in the worldwide market. The PS Vita, despite being a handheld, which boosts sales, only surpassed the Saturn due to its extended life cycle. The Sega Saturn sold well in Japan at 5.8M, ahead of the N64, Genesis, GC consoles that sold more than it in the worldwide market. However, this did not translate into game sales, the Japanese bought a variety of games in the region of 250,000 copies a console is only really a success if the games sell 1M in Japan, in fact the success of a platform is directly related to the number of games above 1M. there is no game on Sega Saturn with 1M in Japan.

PS1 had Arc the Lad and Tekken in 1995, Resident Evil in 1996, PS1 lost to the Saturn in 1995 but the PlayStation client supported this Arc the lad That's the difference, it's the sales flow of games that support a console.

Some numbers

N64 32 million units sold. 51 games over 1M, 38 of them first party, the top 10 best sellers have an average of 6.6M per game.
Genesis 30/35 million units sold. 19 games above 1M, 6 of them first party, these 6 first parties have an average of 2.75M per game.
xbox 24 million units sold. 22 games above 1M, 3 of them first party, these 3 first parties have an average of 5.48M per game.
Gamecube 21.74 million units sold. 36 games over 1M, 27 of them first party, top 10 best sellers have an average of 4M per game.
PS Vita 10/16 million units sold. 7 games above 920k an average of 960K per game. Lol
Wii U 13.56 million units sold. 20 games over 1M, 19 of them first party, top 10 has an average of 4.7M per game. (this console caused losses to Nintendo even though the average was higher than the GC, selling the console is also important).
Dreamcast 9.13 million units sold. 7 games above 1 million, 5 of them first party with an average of 1.39 million per game.
PS1 more than 125 over 1M...

We can learn from these numbers that handheld has an advantage, mobility is a positive thing and allowed the PS Vita to surpass the sales of consoles like DC and Wii U. We also realize that an average of 4M per game is desirable, as this is an average it's worth highlighting that if one game makes 7M and another makes 1M the average is 4M but making games that sell 7M is not easy, it requires licensing of famous characters or a special game, even 4M is very difficult but if the sales flow continues, a trilogy is the way to maximize sales.

In other words Sega of the past was very dependent on Sonic and their other games rarely reached 1M In all these years, only in modern times has Sega managed to have games with sales potential similar to those achieved by Sonic, whether in IPs like Persona 5 or Like a Dragon games that allow you to achieve 4M by making multiple games.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

In other words Sega of the past was very dependent on Sonic and their other games rarely reached 1M In all these years, only in modern times has Sega managed to have games with sales potential similar to those achieved by Sonic, whether in IPs like Persona 5 or Like a Dragon games that allow you to achieve 4M by making multiple games.

I was surprised a how little games like Streets of Rage and Shinobi sold on the MegaDrive

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I was surprised a how little games like Streets of Rage and Shinobi sold on the MegaDrive

I saw in an old source that they achieved 1M with all 3 games, take this with a grain of salt.
Sega Saturn saddens me the most, with only 4 games above 800k, VF2 being the best seller with 1.75M
It's worth mentioning that Sega gave away 3 of these games for free, which makes everything even worse.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

So, would Tekken Tag Tournament be possible on DC? YOU TELL ME!!

 

[Fat Frog]

 

[Fat Frog]

 

[SkylineRKR]

I was surprised a how little games like Streets of Rage and Shinobi sold on the MegaDrive

I remember SoR1 being huge, and it was also part of multi game cartridges. A lot of Genesis owners had this game with their system. SoR 2 was also well known. These 2 likely sold okay. But SoR3, i'm sure it bombed. It was very hard to find from the get go, I managed to track it down about a year after it had launched. It must've sold abysmal. Many gamers didn't even know it existed.

Shinobi same. Revenge was well known, but Shinobi 3? I did pick up a used copy back then but I barely saw it in the wild. I doubt it sold all that well. And even their premier IP, Sonic 3, sold about half of what Sonic 2 sold if you believe data found online. And thats both 3 and Knuckles releases combined even.

Sega software tended to sell like shit, despite the games being well known. Many kids knew SoR, Golden Axe, Shinobi but they never really lit up. And this is also visible when they reappeared on later Sega consoles, no one really bat an eye for Shinobi X and Golden Axe Duel. SoR was buried until another party recently made SoR 4.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

So basically this proves TTT could had run on DC...

 

[Spiral1407]

So, would Tekken Tag Tournament be possible on DC? YOU TELL ME!!

Tekken 5 ran on the PSP and that was weaker than both the PS2 and Dreamcast btw

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Tekken 5 ran on the PSP and that was weaker than both the PS2 and Dreamcast btw

In some aspects PSP is more powerful than DC...It was portable, but still 6 years newer pretty cutting edge hardware for the time and segment.

 

[Spiral1407]

In some aspects PSP is more powerful than DC...It was portable, but still 6 years newer pretty cutting edge hardware for the time and segment.

Is it really? Can you give some examples?

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Is it really? Can you give some examples?

I mean on paper it is, it even has 4X Ram than DC memory if we take the 2001 models onwards, and also on paper
Dreamcast:

• CPU: 128-bit Hitachi SH-4 RISC processor (200MHz 360 MIPS)
• Graphics: NEC CLX2 processor.
• RAM: 16MB, 8MB Video RAM, 2MB Sound RAM.
• Colors: 16.7 million.
• Polygons: 3 million per second.
• Game Media: 1.2GB GD-ROM, 12x access speed.
• Resolution: 640x480 pixels.
• Sound: Yamaha 64 channel.

PSP:

• Widescreen, backlit 4.3-inch (10.9 centimeters) TFT LCD monitor with 16:9 aspect ratio and 480x272 resolution
• 32 MB RAM (64MB in later editions)
• MIPS R4000-based 222-Mhz CPU (later firmware increased to 333-MHz CPU)
• Graphics sub-system running at 166 MHz on a 512-bit bus with 2 MB of DRAM, rendering 664 million pixels per second and 35 million polygons per second
• Media processor using another 2 MB of DRAM
• 3-D graphics processing using NURBS (Nonuniform Rational B-Splines) as well as conventional polygon rendering
• USB 2.0 port, Memory Stick port, Universal Media Disc slot, stereo headphone jack and WiFi wireless LAN port
• Built-in stereo speakers
• 1.8 GB UMD

But, Yes, one thing are the specs, other one what can actually be shown by each system. DC works with higher res, few years ago the guys here on this thread, like Esppiral compared on Beyond3D forums PSP Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur Broken Destinty vs Soul Calibur and DOA 2 and at least geometry wise DC stomped. Also what is Esppiral doing with DOA2 and the he and the rest of the GTA 3 team, shows that the difference isn´t even close to what the specs shows...Not sure if PSP could handle something of the likes of Shenmue 2 or DOA2, even at its lower res, without getting cuts in more areas, but also not sure how DC would handle oor what cutbacks would had to be made for games of the likes of Burnout Legends or the MGS and GoWs. What ím sure is PSP isnt exactly weaker or at least no way weaker, they are pretty comparable.

 

[Spiral1407]

I mean on paper it is, it even has 4X Ram than DC memory if we take the 2001 models onwards, and also on paper
Dreamcast:

• CPU: 128-bit Hitachi SH-4 RISC processor (200MHz 360 MIPS)
• Graphics: NEC CLX2 processor.
• RAM: 16MB, 8MB Video RAM, 2MB Sound RAM.
• Colors: 16.7 million.
• Polygons: 3 million per second.
• Game Media: 1.2GB GD-ROM, 12x access speed.
• Resolution: 640x480 pixels.
• Sound: Yamaha 64 channel.

PSP:

• Widescreen, backlit 4.3-inch (10.9 centimeters) TFT LCD monitor with 16:9 aspect ratio and 480x272 resolution
• 32 MB RAM (64MB in later editions)
• MIPS R4000-based 222-Mhz CPU (later firmware increased to 333-MHz CPU)
• Graphics sub-system running at 166 MHz on a 512-bit bus with 2 MB of DRAM, rendering 664 million pixels per second and 35 million polygons per second
• Media processor using another 2 MB of DRAM
• 3-D graphics processing using NURBS (Nonuniform Rational B-Splines) as well as conventional polygon rendering
• USB 2.0 port, Memory Stick port, Universal Media Disc slot, stereo headphone jack and WiFi wireless LAN port
• Built-in stereo speakers
• 1.8 GB UMD

But, Yes, one thing are the specs, other one what can actually be shown by each system. DC works with higher res, few years ago the guys here on this thread, like Esppiral compared on Beyond3D forums PSP Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur Broken Destinty vs Soul Calibur and DOA 2 and at least geometry wise DC stomped. Also what is Esppiral doing with DOA2 and the he and the rest of the GTA 3 team, shows that the difference isn´t even close to what the specs shows...Not sure if PSP could handle something of the likes of Shenmue 2 or DOA2, even at its lower res, without getting cuts in more areas, but also not sure how DC would handle oor what cutbacks would had to be made for games of the likes of Burnout Legends or the MGS and GoWs. What ím sure is PSP isnt exactly weaker or at least no way weaker, they are pretty comparable.

Yeah, looking at the specs they do seem to be a lot closer than I originally thought. But I'd still put the Dreamcast slightly ahead based on real world examples. Textures, for example, look a lot better on Dreamcast imo (which was also true when comparing it to PS2 tbh).

Either way, my point still stands. If the PSP could do Tekken 5, then I'm sure the Dreamcast could as well.

 

[octos]

Good thing with the DC is that it was easy to directly unlock its full potential, even in the first games. The reason is that there was no real complexity in programming it, no need to do multithreading, no shaders were possible on the GPU etc. It's good because it means we directly got high quality games, but it's also bad because it means there was almost no growth potential. Analogy on PC would be programming for OpenGL 1.4 or Direct3D 7.0.

The PS2 was the opposite: extremely hard to program for but with a lot of potential for growth and a lot of untapped power. With its vector units, you could basically program shaders. Bad thing is that the first games didn't take advantage of its capabilities at all, but again, the good thing is that later games could. Analogy for PC would be programming for OpenGL 2.0 or Direct3D 8.0, both of which added support for shaders.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Geometric-Crusher TTT stages running on DC, GTA 3 being ported with betas playable on any DC...How you like that?

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Geometric-Crusher TTT stages running on DC, GTA 3 being ported with betas playable on any DC...How you like that?

I will give my opinion after seeing Eddy-A and B stages.

 

[Spiral1407]

Not compared to other consoles it wasn't.
OG xb was the first time a console had a CPU that wasn't comically under powered compared to contemporary PCs. We'd wait 20 years for the next time that happened.

Wasn't the Xbox 360 also like that? I remember Capcom comparing it to a Pentium 4 EE 840 back in the day, which wasn't too far off the Athlon 64 X2 4800+. And that was the king of CPUs around the time the 360 launched.

 

[schaft0620]

Power wasn't really a narrative back then because every time you bought a new console it was twice as powerful as the last.

Sega was a beneficiary of coming out between gens. It also brought the arcade to your house. Plus it launched in Japan 1 year before the US so it's launch window was pretty crazy. Like, it's whole first year is nuts.

Then there was the online stuff which wasn't new but, it was taking off and simplified on the Dreamcast.

Then the Dreamcast died like the next day.

 

[Fafalada]

Wasn't the Xbox 360 also like that?

On paper it might have been - in real world - the PPC cores were badly underperforming anything on the market at the time.
The only advantage 360 had was 'more cores' (multi-core setups were still relatively new in PC space) - but individually the cores were actually really weak.

I think the Gamecube had more cache in the CPU, but the Xbox was faster. Didn't really matter when the GPU was far and away better + more RAM.

GC memory subsystem was its strongest point yes (low latency main memory as well) but in CPU workloads that didn't really make that much of a difference, and the CPU was still - simply slower than what XBox had.

Not sure if PSP could handle something of the likes of Shenmue 2 or DOA2, even at its lower res

PSP had DOA:X (and there were other 360 ports it received) - DOA2 wouldn't have been any problem.

Yeah, looking at the specs they do seem to be a lot closer than I originally thought. But I'd still put the Dreamcast slightly ahead based on real world examples. Textures, for example, look a lot better on Dreamcast imo (which was also true when comparing it to PS2 tbh).

Asset quality on portables was significantly held back by - being portable (it was never viewed at the size normal consoles were) - so it's not a simple 1:1 comparison. You just didn't need the extra detail, so it was cut back much more than TV consoles of the same spec would.
It is true that - on paper PSP should have significantly outperformed DC(the spec also omits that PSP had a dual-core CPU for instance) - but that didn't quite pan out due to mostly memory subsystem limitations.

 

[Fat Frog]

Good thing with the DC is that it was easy to directly unlock its full potential, even in the first games.

The DC GTA3 team explained on twitter it was a cliche.(especially for the SH4)

 

[Spiral1407]

On paper it might have been - in real world - the PPC cores were badly underperforming anything on the market at the time.
The only advantage 360 had was 'more cores' (multi-core setups were still relatively new in PC space) - but individually the cores were actually really weak.


GC memory subsystem was its strongest point yes (low latency main memory as well) but in CPU workloads that didn't really make that much of a difference, and the CPU was still - simply slower than what XBox had.


PSP had DOA:X (and there were other 360 ports it received) - DOA2 wouldn't have been any problem.


Asset quality on portables was significantly held back by - being portable (it was never viewed at the size normal consoles were) - so it's not a simple 1:1 comparison. You just didn't need the extra detail, so it was cut back much more than TV consoles of the same spec would.
It is true that - on paper PSP should have significantly outperformed DC(the spec also omits that PSP had a dual-core CPU for instance) - but that didn't quite pan out due to mostly memory subsystem limitations.

I actually managed to find the quote again via the wayback machine and they seem to be talking about real world performance here. From what I could gather, an individual Xenon PPE performs like a 2.8GHz P4, and like you said, SMT + multicore boosts that to the EE 840 in multithreaded games.

Now obviously a 2005 CPU performing like a 2003 one in single core isn't very good. But I'm failing to see how that's any different than the OG XBOX, which was based on a CPU from 1999 (P3 733MHz Coppermine). And on top of that, the OG Xbox couldn't rely on SMT or extra cores to help it compete with the best processors available in 2001.

 

[Fafalada]

From what I could gather, an individual Xenon PPE performs like a 2.8GHz P4

Not the way I remember it (admittedly it's been awhile).
You might get close-ish if you fully utilised 2-way SMT on a core (so 2 threads to match single-threaded performance of a P4) - but that still had caveats of avoiding certain architectural pitfalls that weren't always trivial. In-order execution + the weird memory-subsystem concessions meant that code needed a lot of hand-massaging to keep those cores performant.
In pathological cases - even a 300mhz PS2 CPU could outperform those - but granted, that at least was a bit easier to avoid.

But I'm failing to see how that's any different than the OG XBOX, which was based on a CPU from 1999 (P3 733MHz Coppermine).

You're right in terms of absolute numbers it wasn't that much better off (compared to top-end, but gaming CPUs weren't so top-end heavy either then). Also remember we were coming off of console CPUs that had a fraction of the cache, much lower clocks to what desktops did, and in-order execution (and we went back to that in generation after too).
My point was mainly that - while most games on DC, PS2 and GC were CPU bound as a rule - XBox wasn't nearly as often (also what allowed it to double framerates at times - GPU advantage alone wouldn't have mattered if CPU wasn't up to the task).

 

[Alexios]

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[Alexios]

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[Krathoon]

The killer app for the Dreamcast was Soul Caliber.

What is great about nowadays is that the Dreamcast emulation is pretty much perfect now.

I think Flycast has reached a point where it emulates Nightmare Creatures 2 properly now.

Still, you have to use good old Demul to use the microphone and play Seaman.

 

[Alexios]

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[Alexios]

It seems like the Doom 64 port/remaster dev might try to get it to 60fps after all

I obsessed for a few months to get locked 30 fps everywhere but one scene, guess I need to do the same thing now but for 60

I wonder if its abrupt drops from 60 to 30 with little inbetween are due to any vsync.

 

[Alexios]

Also missed this last month (and didn't know the game exists)! There's the first game too of course, they look pretty similar. Wii Sports Golf for Dreamcast

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[Xaeroxcore666]

Also missed this last month (and didn't know the game exists)! There's the first game too of course, they look pretty similar. Wii Sports Golf for Dreamcast

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The characters look better than the Miis...But also the Golf course and the lighting of course look better on Wii Sports.

 

[Alexios]

Fun story of someone taking a Dreamcast to junior school and having kids enjoy Street Fighter III and Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

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[Alexios]

[NEWER ENGLISH PATCH] Space Channel 5 Part 2 - Dreamcast-Talk.com

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[SweetTooth]

Dreamcast was really capable for a 1998 machine, well balanced too. Not as powerful as a fully utilized PS2 but really close and easy to extract power too.