Doesn't surprise me one bit.

Dreamcast comes right after the über-console that is the SNES.

ok ... so if it was so good, how comes it was commercial disaster (and don't roll out that old 'it was sonys doing' fallacy.

Dammit, why can't I log in? I'm swooping back into the fold to clear up a Dreamcast-y mess, and I must do it under the undignified guise of an anonymous user. Oh well.

offal eater, as you should well know the quality of a system's software doesn't matter too much commercially. The problem that Sega had was that it couldn't convince people to buy highly rated games such as Shenmue and Jet Set Radio. Part of that was down to absolutely horrendous marketing (and bear in mind that two expensive DC ad campaigns were pulled by regulators over here), another was - yes - down to the "wait and see" factor that the Playstation 2 provided. It doesn't help that there was a quality drought over the summer of 2000, coupled with no price drop. There was the lack of support from EA, the amazing willingness to bleed money (see Chu Chu Rocket giveaway), and numerous other factors.

Of course, the main thing to bear in mind is that the Dreamcast was practically doomed before it was launched. Sega was in an amazingly precarious financial position anyway, and the system would have really needed to take off like the PS2 to have survived. It didn't, and Sega took it on the chin to the tune of $400 million in losses during the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 financial years.

Key thing to take away from this post: none of that business rubbish matters. The Dreamcast played host to a number of awesome games, and the commercial failure of the system means you can pick many of them up for £5 or so. When those games include Soul Calibur, Virtua Tennis 2 and Jet Set Radio, it's almost rude to say no. The winner is any consumer smart enough to pick up on that.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Blame it on all the damn casual gamers that buy anything that has "Sony" on the box...

...DC is still my favourite system today. I busted out Virtua Tennis after playing VT3 and found I actually still prefer the original! It may have had an early departure, but the ratio of quality to crap games simply massacres the other previous-gen systems...

This good > crap ratio thing is ridiculous, you just don't buy the s**t ones. The PS2 has far more good games than the DC ever had. It's like claiming you had better trainers after finishing last in a 100 meter sprint.

And as for blaming everything on casual gamers, how does the DS and Wii's success fit with this, surely thats the market Nintendo are aiming at.