2011 marks the 10 year anniversary of Sega’s restructure as a third party developer. At the time of restructure, Charles Bellfield was Sega of America’s Vice President of Communications. In an interview with The New York Times in 2001, Bellfield felt that the hotly contested presidential election between George W Bush and Al Gore was partially responsible for the company’s move away from developing hardware. Bellfield points to a drop in consumer confidence during the delayed results of the election. He feels this resulted in the Dreamcast having lower than expected sales.
Do you really feel that the 2000 presidential election was a dominant force in the fall of the Dreamcast, or do you think Sega was possibly trying to point away from their own faults?
[Source: The New York Times]
Only 51.8% of the voting public cast a ballot that year. Consider also that video gaming’s main demographic is not of age to legally vote anyway and that makes for a very small demographic potentially affected by this “consumer confidence”.
This killed the Dreamcast:
1. SEGA already being so in debt from Saturn/32X/Nomad losses that they were unable to invest enough capital in sustaining their console. It broke records when it launched – what other system does that and then closes shop a year and a half later? The Saturn, a bust from the get go, had a life more than double that.
2. Sony’s eclipsing PS2 hype based on inflated specs and promises. The machine sounded leaps and bounds better than the DC and at that point consumers were going to trust Sony over the fumbling SEGA.
3. No DVD drive.
4. Piracy. This may explain how while the Dreamcast console was a strong seller, the software market, where typically a first-party makes up their losses, did not yield the success SEGA needed.
5. Big the Cat. I don’t know how, but there’s no way he didn’t have a hand in all this.
“Bush doesn’t care about Shenmue.”