I replaced the batteries on my three US Dreamcasts earlier this year. Each one had a different sized battery.
My VA0 revision console, with a date code of July 1999, had the largest battery with a Sanyo ML2430. My other two were VA1 revisions made in March 2000, and one had a Maxwell ML2032 and the other had a Panasonic ML2020. (With coin cells, the first two digits is the battery's diameter in millimeters, and the last two is the thickness in 10ths of a millimeter. So a 2032 is 20 millimeters wide, and 3.2 millimeters thick.)
Apparently, Sega of Japan planned for a US$299 price point, but Sega of America wanted to sell it at $199, so SOJ ended up doing redesigns on the internals to bring down the manufacturing cost. I guess using cheaper batteries (whatever they could get a hold of, screw consistency) was one way they did that.
There are so many unanswerable questions about the Dreamcast. Would launching with dual-stick controllers have saved it and jumpstarted the era of the console FPS early? Would the increased sales from using DVD have made up for the increased manufacturing cost? How much did waiting a year to launch it outside Japan hurt it?
As a retro gaming enthusiast myself, I think the issue of the system not having a DVD drive is only potentially surpassed by the ease of which piracy was possible on the system.
What seems craziest to me of that era is that Microsoft didn't just buy Sega to enter the market and instead made a huge bet on Halo. Seamus Blackley should be better known for what they pulled off in Redmond.
Halo wasn’t a “huge bet”. Bungie had made three criminally underrated games in the Marathon series prior to Halo. In fact, Halo is largely supposed to take place in the same universe, although the final product was only vaguely linked.
MS was knee deep in anti-trust negotiations with the DoJ around that time so I imagine acquisitions of that size and scope were off the table. Sega probably was small potatoes financially for MS at the time, but buying one of the three companies in that market wouldn't have helped their anti-competitive reputation.
My understanding at the time was that Xbox was not so much a bet on gaming as a bet on the PC architecture—and the Microsoft software platforms that dominated it.
Incidentally, the bus used by the controllers (maple) actually had support for a second analog stick, but they never released a controller that used it (by which i mean a regular gamepad, there were several novelty controllers for certain games and IDK if any of them put it to use).
Speaking of novelty controllers, SEGA nearly beat Wii to the motion control fad by several years. There was a fishing rod controller and a pair of maraccas that both used motion controls. they also had a prototype of a more general-purpose motion controller which strongly resembles the wii remote but unfortunately this was never released (source: https://segaretro.org/Air_NiGHTS )
If they had just made that their core control method instead of an optional gimmick that only a few games used, history could have been very different.
The light gun used by the arcade version of House of the Dead 2 (and I think Virtua Cop 3 and Ghost Squad) also worked the same way as the Wii Remote's pointer, using a camera in the controller to sense infrared LEDs. So the screen doesn't flash white when you pull the trigger on the arcade version of HotD2 like it does on the console version.
Instead of a single bar with two LEDs like on the Wii, there's a row of five LEDs above and below the screen. You can make them out in this video:
Would launching with dual-stick controllers have saved it and jumpstarted the era of the console FPS early?
Not likely. Goldeneye showed that console gamers were perfectly happy to play with one stick, if the game was good. Halo brought in the console FPS era because it was such a good game. After all, everyone hates the original xbox controller.
Would the increased sales from using DVD have made up for the increased manufacturing cost?
Consoles are usually a loss leader. Making them more expensive to produce (by licensing DVD tech from Sony) means you're just losing more money on each sale. At least Sega makes some money on games sales. They would get nothing from DVD sales. People would have probably bought more games if more Dreamcasts were sold, but Sega's problems were way more than install base. They burned a lot of goodwill with both developers and retailers with the Saturn and 32x and had infighting between Sega Japan and Sega of America. All these were contributing to the poor library and poor sales.
How much did waiting a year to launch it outside Japan hurt it?
Hard to say how much this mattered. Great exclusive titles were being released for PSX through Christmas 2001, even past the release of the PS2. Because Sega had a tough time getting devs on board, they had a tough time getting the killer app. If you already had a PSX, and you probably did, and you weren't flush with cash, why would you buy a Dreamcast when great games like Final Fantasy VIII, let alone the PS2 were around the corner?
I don't think the lack of dual-stick killed it.
Many factors play in:
* Mostly the piracy killed Dreamcast. It was way simpler to copy the GD-ROM than the Xbox and PS2 DVDs.
* The lack of DVD functionality, which both Xbox and PS2 came with.
'Piracy killed the Dreamcast' is very commonly put around, and it was incredibly easy for a contemporary console (literally just burn a CDR, no hardware modifications required), but if you look at the attach rates [1] for the console, they are comparable to successful consoles. Pirated games still needed consoles to be played, so we would expect a much lower attach rate than normal if this was a primary factor.
Ultimately, it was almost everything else going against the console. [2]
> Would the increased sales from using DVD have made up for the increased manufacturing cost?
It would have been crucial, but not enough. Sony's hype was strong. Remember the supercomputer status? The only reason the XBox stood a chance was because it had strong specs. People were even more into specs then than they are now. So in answer to the "waiting a year" question: it hurt it a lot. They really needed that year to build momentum and they didn't get it.
> Would launching with dual-stick controllers have saved it and jumpstarted the era of the console FPS early?
No, but I do think the controller needed help. The analog sticks were slippery, the triggers were positioned awkwardly, and the VMU was overengineered. Maybe the VMU costs were negligible but they seemed like a waste.
Another question that has not been answered yet: What happened to all the great arcade games of the Dreamcast? In 40 years it has been my favorite console so far and I would love to play again all the good games it had. The only fun alternative is the Neo Geo but the graphics are a bit outdated.
Dreamcast was amazing. Unfortunately most gamers didn't give it a look as they were too hyped for PS2 due to specs.
Funny that for quite a while the dreamcast games were performing and looking better.
This right here.
Gamers were burnt by SEGA's past consoles and SONY's hype machine was running on all cylinders.
SONY was promising Toy Story level graphic and all sorts of nonsense with their "emotion engine".
Booting up DC and Ps2 games in an emulator shows you just how much better textures looked on the Dreamcast, and how most DC games ran at 60fps instead of 30.
I loved my Dreamcast but the Saturn was Sega's pinnacle console. So many of the games were blindingly original.
- Radiant Silvergun the best scrolling shootem up at least I ever played (far superior to its sequel Ikaruga)
- Guardian Heroes a scrolling beatemup with dozens (houndreds?) of glorious characters to choose from.
- Nights into Dreams. You fly like a rocket, you dance, you liberate weird little tamagochi which you take on your VMU. By Sonic Team.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga. RPG on a dragon. Beautiful.
- Grandia. Ok this I never played as it wasn't translated, but its reputation preceeds it.
- Fighters Megamix. Graphics werent great but it brought together all of Sega's signature characters (including Sonic) into a Virtua Fighter ring. Madness.
- Burning Rangers. Meca Firefighting, by Sonic Team.
After the Saturn, the Dreamcast was a disappointment, even though it was great. And after the Dreamcast, I stopped playing games. Nothing like those old days.
You could put together a strong argument that Dreamcast had a similar level of originality too. Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Powerstone, Samba Di Amigo, Seaman, Shenmue were all games that were risk taking because they didn't have much of a template to build from.
Minor nitpick; but the Saturn didn’t have a VMU; or Visual Memory Unit, that was the Dreamcast. You’re confusing NiGHTs Into Dreams’ A-life (which was still a thing but only in-game) with Sonic Adventure’s Chao system, which allowed you to take the little buggers on the go as I did in High School, lol.
Dreamcast was so overpowered, you could boot a PS1 emulator on a disc, boot the emulator up, and plop in a PS1 game. Play the game, with higher resolution graphics!
PSO unfortunately didn't have much of an endgame (all you can really do is glorified boss-rush mode), but I still got a couple extra years out of it circa 2007/2008 via the Blue Burst PC port with unofficial English translation. Nostalgia aside for using a genuine Dreamcast controller, Blue Burst brought some nice expansions and QoL additions. To boot, the guys who hosted the servers also brought back some of the "holiday" events and Japan-exclusive stuff that Sega used to host. Being able to run around with some of the staff-only skins (like Sonic/Tails/Knuckles) and a Sega Saturn MAG floating on my shoulder was fun, indeed!
Anyone still looking to play online games (yes, there's online games resurrected, even today they're becoming more and more) on the Dreamcast and don't have a BBA (games that supported that as opposed to the modem have been less anyway) should look into setting up a DreamPi: https://dreamcast.wiki/DreamPi
My jam was Jet Set Radio, Toy Commander, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX (What I got), and Sega GT.
But lets not forget Quake III Arena, which is "considered one of the best PC-to-console ports of its time thanks to its smooth frame rate and online play".
Dreamcast keyboard and mouse helped. You could actually host your own PC Q3 server on same version as DC and play against PC players if on same Q3 version.
I LOVED Jet Grind Radio (Jet Set Radio here in the UK). That combo gameplay of doing cool tricks while completing the course was seriously addictive. Trickstyle did a vaguely similar thing - still doing cool tricks, but replace graffiti with racing.
I'm still only halfway through the third one, I'm happy to get a continuation of the story but the controls and feel of the game feel so clunky compared to the first two. The first two had their own share of clunkiness but at least it had it's charm, and overall the games still had an unmatched (at the time) cinematic feel.
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My VA0 revision console, with a date code of July 1999, had the largest battery with a Sanyo ML2430. My other two were VA1 revisions made in March 2000, and one had a Maxwell ML2032 and the other had a Panasonic ML2020. (With coin cells, the first two digits is the battery's diameter in millimeters, and the last two is the thickness in 10ths of a millimeter. So a 2032 is 20 millimeters wide, and 3.2 millimeters thick.)
Apparently, Sega of Japan planned for a US$299 price point, but Sega of America wanted to sell it at $199, so SOJ ended up doing redesigns on the internals to bring down the manufacturing cost. I guess using cheaper batteries (whatever they could get a hold of, screw consistency) was one way they did that.
What seems craziest to me of that era is that Microsoft didn't just buy Sega to enter the market and instead made a huge bet on Halo. Seamus Blackley should be better known for what they pulled off in Redmond.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast
Speaking of novelty controllers, SEGA nearly beat Wii to the motion control fad by several years. There was a fishing rod controller and a pair of maraccas that both used motion controls. they also had a prototype of a more general-purpose motion controller which strongly resembles the wii remote but unfortunately this was never released (source: https://segaretro.org/Air_NiGHTS )
If they had just made that their core control method instead of an optional gimmick that only a few games used, history could have been very different.
Instead of a single bar with two LEDs like on the Wii, there's a row of five LEDs above and below the screen. You can make them out in this video:
https://youtu.be/vmt-UAc28bo?t=192
Not likely. Goldeneye showed that console gamers were perfectly happy to play with one stick, if the game was good. Halo brought in the console FPS era because it was such a good game. After all, everyone hates the original xbox controller.
Would the increased sales from using DVD have made up for the increased manufacturing cost?
Consoles are usually a loss leader. Making them more expensive to produce (by licensing DVD tech from Sony) means you're just losing more money on each sale. At least Sega makes some money on games sales. They would get nothing from DVD sales. People would have probably bought more games if more Dreamcasts were sold, but Sega's problems were way more than install base. They burned a lot of goodwill with both developers and retailers with the Saturn and 32x and had infighting between Sega Japan and Sega of America. All these were contributing to the poor library and poor sales.
How much did waiting a year to launch it outside Japan hurt it?
Hard to say how much this mattered. Great exclusive titles were being released for PSX through Christmas 2001, even past the release of the PS2. Because Sega had a tough time getting devs on board, they had a tough time getting the killer app. If you already had a PSX, and you probably did, and you weren't flush with cash, why would you buy a Dreamcast when great games like Final Fantasy VIII, let alone the PS2 were around the corner?
But the performance was outstanding in Dreamcast.
Ultimately, it was almost everything else going against the console. [2]
[1] https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Software_tie_ratio
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d2xuRwYUt4
It would have been crucial, but not enough. Sony's hype was strong. Remember the supercomputer status? The only reason the XBox stood a chance was because it had strong specs. People were even more into specs then than they are now. So in answer to the "waiting a year" question: it hurt it a lot. They really needed that year to build momentum and they didn't get it.
> Would launching with dual-stick controllers have saved it and jumpstarted the era of the console FPS early?
No, but I do think the controller needed help. The analog sticks were slippery, the triggers were positioned awkwardly, and the VMU was overengineered. Maybe the VMU costs were negligible but they seemed like a waste.
- Radiant Silvergun the best scrolling shootem up at least I ever played (far superior to its sequel Ikaruga)
- Guardian Heroes a scrolling beatemup with dozens (houndreds?) of glorious characters to choose from.
- Nights into Dreams. You fly like a rocket, you dance, you liberate weird little tamagochi which you take on your VMU. By Sonic Team.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga. RPG on a dragon. Beautiful.
- Grandia. Ok this I never played as it wasn't translated, but its reputation preceeds it.
- Fighters Megamix. Graphics werent great but it brought together all of Sega's signature characters (including Sonic) into a Virtua Fighter ring. Madness.
- Burning Rangers. Meca Firefighting, by Sonic Team.
After the Saturn, the Dreamcast was a disappointment, even though it was great. And after the Dreamcast, I stopped playing games. Nothing like those old days.
We also wrote a demo with scroller and star field on the VMU and called us VirtuaMunstaz.
It’s amazing that most of the old Dreamcast online services are still available by hacks and enthusiasts
But lets not forget Quake III Arena, which is "considered one of the best PC-to-console ports of its time thanks to its smooth frame rate and online play".