Top 5 Dreamcast Fails

The Sega Dreamcast is arguably the greatest video game console of all time, but even the greatest consoles have their fair share of flaws and failures. I've come up with the top five things that set the Dreamcast back from fulfilling it's total potential and ultimately led to it's death.

5. Sega's Past Failures
Sega had an ever growing list of past failures by the time the Dreamcast came along. Practically every system after the Genesis and before the Dreamcast was a failure or a step in the wrong direction for Sega. After the Saturn was a complete flop in the US, Sega had totally lost it's trust with gamers. Sega had managed to regain some of their trust with gamers, but most had moved on to Sony and their PlayStation and Sony had convinced their consumers to wait until the arrival of the PS2. This set the Dreamcast back far and is one of the reasons it ultimately did not to that well.

4. Too Many Ports
The Dreamcast had more ports than any other system I could think of. This made it very hard for gamers not in the know to see the true power of the Dreamcast and everything it could do. A lot of people saw the ports and were not impressed because they most always were direct ports with no upgrades to visuals or gameplay, giving gamers no reason to buy the Dreamcast version over the original. The overwhelming amount of ports on Sega's last system made the playing field very crowded and made it harder for system-exclusive games to stand out.

3. Lack of EA Support
Due to the many past failures of Sega, EA specifically said they would not be supporting the Dreamcast. Now even though Sega did fine with their 2K Sports line of games when it came to covering sports, Sega still could have benefited from having support from EA when it came to other games as well as sports.

2. Ability to Pirate Games

Sega tried to prevent pirating with it's development of the GD-ROM media, but the choice to stick with CD-ROM versus going DVD like the Dreamcast's competitors was a problem for Sega because it made it very easy to download and burn Dreamcast games onto regular CD-Rs and play them in any Dreamcast. This was a huge failure for the Dreamcast. Also, the ability to make homebrew games and apps and hacked versions of games as well as the leaking of games for Dreamcast that were canceled (i.e. Half-Life, Propeller Arena, etc.) made it very easy to optain an illegal copy of a game not intended to be released.

1. NO DVD PLAYER!

By 1999, the CD-ROM media in home consoles was beginning to see it's death. PlayStation was about the last successful move for CD-ROMs. DVDs had come into play and when it came to games, it was the future platform to develop on. The choice to continue with the CD-ROM platform was the number one bad decision for Sega when it came to the Dreamcast. Had Sega put a DVD drive in the Dreamcast from the start I think it would have done way better than it did and diffidently would have had a leg up against the competition, especially the PS2. Even if Sega didn't put a DVD drive into the Dreamcast at first, when word came that PS2 would have one, they should have at least introduced an add-on or option to trade your old DC for a rebate towards a new DVD-based one.

Those are my top five reasons why the Dreamcast failed. Had Sega followed all or some of these points, the Dreamcast would have probably been around a lot longer. The Dreamcast is a great system and will be in the hearts and minds of gamers forever regardless of it's flaws.