Quote Originally Posted by Vincent, Thunder God View Post
Sega had a weird trajectory - often ahead of the curve in terms of hardware, and possessing some real talent (like Yu Suzuki), but failing to manage things on the business side by flooding the market with failed consoles and expensive peripherals. I don't know what things would have looked like if the Dreamcast had been more successful (because it certainly had the potential to be as a console, aside from the issue of easy pirating with burned discs) - but I don't know that the current state of the industry could really support 4 heavy-weight console platforms - it struggles enough with 3 as it is.
Honestly, the Dreamcast was pretty much euthanized before it really had a chance. The system had two issues, one Sega of Japan pretty much screwed up the systems launch over there, which hurt the core base to make the company feel safe. They even slashed the price before the western release in Japan, which meant the system sold at a loss. In the West, the system fared significantly better because they had some better people working in their overseas branches, but due to the way Sega of Japan screwed up the Saturn launch, they had to recover too much ground with retailers and consumers that the system failed to recapture the market share that the Genesis had, leaving Sony and Nintendo to control most of it. They then gambled on some aggressive price slashing, rebates, and the Seganet feature to hopefully recapture the market before the PS2 was launched, but Sony had a better marketing plan and their huge control of the market meant that despite the console shortages and weak launch titles for the system, people waited out for it. Sega as a whole was just too financially weak to gamble on these aggressive sales tactics and the system became a loss on both sides of the Pacific. Then the company had some reshuffling of the corporate structure and the new heads apparently always hated the console side of the company and opted to kill it and go third party despite a lot of internal objections. Overall, Sega pretty much shot themselves in the foot by their poor handling of the Saturn that despite the Dreamcast being a better system, the company was already too far gone to have it be successful unless a miracle happened.