[x999x]

Bernie Stolar killed the dreamcast on launch when he sank millions into production and marketing all of Sega's sports titles on launch. I had a chance to talk to him at the DC's US launch here in los angeles, and I have to say I was excited to ask him a question on the DC's online future. You know what he replied? "Online? Who plays games online?"

Bernie thought that cashing in on sports game franchises would have solidified a large userbase in america, since sports titles historically do very well here. After this userbase was established, more diverse games were to flow in. Unfortunately, this never came to fruition, and soon after the PS2 launched. The DC was then reverse engineered using it's own broadband modem, and then hacked by breaking it's GDRom's encryption, and making it possible to copy games over the broadband adapter.

So you take a small marketshare, and then make it smaller by only offering a limited palette of games, then stomp on it a few times with a big pirate boot that gives out free copies of games by the thousands and you'll have a pretty good idea of why the DC failed.

The DS is by no means a DC, and if anyone has ever made that comparison, I would have to immediately assume they are referring to the RaymanDS screenshots, in which it's clear Infogrames is recycling it's textures it did so many years ago for the DC.