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Sega Kills Off Dreamcast?

by Maarten Goldstein, Jan 23, 2001 11:22am PST
Related Topics – Sega, Dreamcast

UK trade website MCV is reporting that Sega will stop production of the Dreamcast consoles by the end of March already, due to continued heavy losses on the machine. Here's the word

A fourth straight year of losses, mainly caused by Dreamcast, have forced the company into a radical rethink of its strategy. The machine will continue to be marketed throughout 2001, halting sales once the inventory is exhausted. Software will continue to be developed for the machine by Sega in the mean time. The future for Sega lies as a software company on other formats and it already has five PlayStation 2 titles in the pipeline and two for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance machine, due out in March.
Even if Sega continues to develop software, I doubt many 3rd party developers will. Suckage. Thanks to KungFu who let me know about the story. update: Sega of America issued the following press release regarding the news
Sega of America stated today that the company globally reaffirms its commitment to Dreamcast. In fact, Sega has more than 100 games worldwide coming out for the platform in the next year. It is not Sega's policy to comment on rumors and the company has not made any statement regarding ceasing manufacturing of Dreamcast or development for other videogame platforms




Comments

81 Threads | 221 Comments






  • This one is very disturbing, yet had to be expected. Sega has never regained a measure of respect from the game buying company since Nintrendo over took them with the SNES in the Genesis days. The 32X bombed.. The Saturn bombed.. Now, it looks like the Dreamcast will fall to the wayside also, and it is not due to the hardware or games itself. Poor marketing and Sony fanboys.. =) Cant complain about the PS2's though, got one sitting under my Dreamcast. Hopefully Sega's games will wind up on the PS2 (NFL2K1 kicks much ass, and Jet Grind Radio also).. RIP Dreamcast.



  • Uh, they're not "closing down"....they *may* be getting away from producing consoles, but what they did was engineer the Dreamcast technology down to 2 or 3 chips that they will be able to license. They were in negotiations with companies like Panasonic and JVC to include the DC technology into things like DVD players,etc. They also plan to get the DC technology into a "box" you rent from the cable company. So instead of BUYING a system, you would pay like $10 a month for the hardware, and when they upgrade, you just call 'em up and have them bring you a new model. Sega has for a while talked about becoming software only...but the "Dreamcast" brand still has a lot of power behind it. Hell, they went from like 5% of the market after Saturn disappeared to now over 35% of the market now... Sony is like 50% and Nintendo is now 15% of the market....