Nearly ten years ago EA Sports president Peter Moore was an executive at Sega, brought in at the eleventh hour to manage the launch of the Dreamcast. It would be Sega's last console, as the Japanese game giant announced not long after that it was backing out of the hardware business and focusing on publishing software.

It would have been reasonable to assume that Sega's Japanese leadership made the decision to surrender the console wars, but Moore took credit for the decision in an interview with The Guardian.

"On January 31, 2001, we said Sega is leaving hardware--somehow I got to make that call, not the Japanese. I had to fire a lot of people; it was not a pleasant day," Moore recalled.

In Moore's mind, the alternative was Sega taking one last gamble on a console and facing bankruptcy--not an attractive option after the failure of the Saturn and Dreamcast systems. "So we licked our wounds, ate some humble pie and went to Sony and Nintendo to ask for [development] kits," he explained.

Jason has put together a guide for all you Shenmue players out there who are itching to import the sequel and convert your save game over. The process it not exactly simple, but if you're a real man (woman?) who must have their stuff ported over, take a look at this scary stuff:

Fire up Hex Workshop and open the Shenmue save. You can do this by either opening the program via the start menu link and opening the file manually, or by right-clicking on the Shenmue file and choosing “Hex Edit using Hex Workshop.[snip]

Ok, maybe the headline was a tad misleading. It turns out that a Japanese Dreamcast game in Japan has been released with a PC virus. Apparently the game's CD comes with PC screen saver infected with W32.Kriz. The title is being pulled from shelves there. (Thanks Raf)

While this doesn't affect anyone outside of Japan, the virus thought does bring up something interesting. Namely that as people are hacking the X Box left and right, there's likely to be an X Box warez scene. It'll likely be very soon before people start to write loaders for the warezed games, as well as mini-games of their own. So what do you guys think of X Box viruses/trojans? Does it break the X Box warranty to run downloaded content on it?

If you don't feel like spending $200 or $300 on a new console, Sega today announced the Dreamcast will be selling for a mere $49.95. As noted in the CNET story, that's similar to the price of a game on the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube.

According to FGN it will be real hard to not pick up a Dreamcast. On August 12 the price will drop to a very low $79.95. At the end of the year, the price will drop even more to $49.95 to clear out the last few units. The DC has a great library of games, so this is a pretty damn good price. Thanks Stomped.

Rumors by various news sources have just been confirmed by Sierra, the Dreamcast version of Half-Life has been cancelled. Not surprising since the Dreamcast console has been cancelled, although word was that the port was pretty much done. This is where the Blue Shift mission originated from which was recently released for the PC. This is what Sierra had to say

Sierra regrets the cancellation of Half-Life for the Dreamcast due to changing market conditions.

And this is what Gearbox president Randy Pitchford had to say about the cancellation.

It would've been nice to see the product on shelves since there are some fun differences between Blue Shift PC and Blue Shift Dreamcast. But, mostly, my regrets go out to the guys at Captivation Digital Laboratories who worked very hard to make one of the most complex PC games ever made fit onto the 16mb Dreamcast system. I salute them and wish them luck in their future endeavors.

The IGN guys are running a special this week on the upcoming Dreamcast version of Half-Life which is looking pretty darn smooth. If you've got a Dreamcast and enjoyed the original Half-Life it's probably worth picking up.

Word in this report over at GameSpot is that the Half-Life port to Dreamcast may end up axing their multiplayer support. The port has been getting quite a lot of good press with word being it's quite a bit enhanced since the original PC release.

Trying to get some money, or legit case? In any case, Sega is sueing KMart for allegedly failing to pay some $2.2million worth in Dreamcast consoles. Kmart accounted for less than 5% of Dreamcast sales last year, and already stopped carrying the machines in August.

Stomped has an interview with Pete Clark who is director of development at Secret Level. Secret Level has ported Unreal Tournament to the Dreamcast. That version went gold yesterday and should be in stores by March.

There's a lenghty interview with Charles Bellfield of Sega America on Gameweek, in which VP of marketing and communications answers questions about the demise of the Dreamcast, the plans for Saturn games -> PSOne ports, support for Gamecube and the Playstation 2, and just a whole lot more. Good read.

The DailyRadar guys have gotten a hold of some video footage of Unreal Tournament running on a Dreamcast. The Quake3 Dreamcast port was pretty impressive stuff, wonder how the UT one will turn out.

Gamespot UK has a single photo of the Pace set top box which will use Dreamcast technology to play games.

GameCenter has an interview with Sega VP Charles Belfield, talking to him about the amount of pressings of games now that they will stop making the hardware, Virtua Fighter 4 (going Playstation 2), if retail chains will still sell the Dreamcast, if the Dreamcast will REALLY be the last hardware system and how are the Sega developers responding to working with the PlayStation 2.

It's official now, Sega is indeed abandoning the Dreamcast in March, instead offering its technology to others and providing content for other systems, although Sega will continue to provide software for the console. However, while we were expecting just the announcements for Playstation 2, Gameboy Advance or Gamecube (and Xbox perhaps) titles, Sega announces Palm support as well saying they will develop game content for the Palm handhelds by the end of the year. These games can be played online, no other details were given. Here is a Reuters story on the announcement.

Looks like Sega will slash the Dreamcast console prices once again, this time to just $99. They are doing this to get rid of excess inventory. Sega had hoped to sell 7.5 million units in the US by March 31, however so far there have just 4.5 million units sold.

As was expected, Sega (or rather the company they will work with, Pace Micro Technology ) has announced a set-top box with Dreamcast technology. The box will also have a harddrive as it will be a VCR type thing too along with game support obviously, and will have broadband support. No other details are available.

Following up on the Sega stories from yesterday, Sega released a PR (Thanks Mick) which of course denied that they will be dropping the Dreamcast but confirm an anticipated "structural reformation". They also confirm that they are in negotiations with Sony and Nintendo for PS2 and Gameboy Advance titles.

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

Just a little while back we heard news that Sega would be developing stuff for Nintendo, and of course those neeto PC Dreamcast cards. Well it doesnt stop there, according to a recent reuters story (Thanks Stpomed) Sega is planning to announce plans to develop for the Playstation2 now, and there is even mention of possible XBox work to boot.

Sega Corp up 10.65 percent at 1,184 yen after Jiji news agency reported the video game machine maker will unveil a reorganisation plan by the end of January that will include supplying software for rival Sony Corp's popular PlayStation 2. Shares in Sega are still down nearly 70 percent, however, from a year ago. [...] Sega, suffering from weak sales of its Dreamcast game console, will also consider supplying software to Microsoft Corp's new console system ``XBox'' scheduled to be launched this fall, the Jiji report said.