July 23'rd 1999

The Fate of the Dreamcast.
     Dreamcast - SEGA's last hurrah? Possibly. Let's take a look at the Dreamcast, a system with very pretty graphics, but not much more, shall we?

     While it's no secret that the Dreamcast will likely be one of this holiday seasons biggest sellers, what's left after that? With SEGA's track record, the system will not keep it's footing long enough to make a substantial impact on the market. Sure they've got a very large library of games to be released at launch, or shortly after (about 30), but from what I've heard only about 1/3 of them are any good.

     Let's face it, the system is doing horribly in Japan (even worse than N64 last time I checked.) We can use the Japanese market to glimpse the future of the system here. Although the US and Japanese markets are two very different ones, there are some similarities. I mean even the N64 had a strong launch there. While the Dreamcast sold fairly well it's first week or so, it soon fizzled out. Now if this technology rich system can't do well in Japan, I only smell failure in the states (after a while)

     Dreamcast will likely have a good 6-9 months of popularity, but when the TRUE next-gen systems are rolled out SEGA better fess up, and realize they've once again jumped the gun in the system wars.

     Now don't flame me and call me names, I might very well be wrong (which I hope I am. I, as much as anyone, would like to have more competition in the game market. It only makes for better games.), but as it stands right now the future does not look good for SEGA's Dreamcast. While it will undoubtably do MUCH better than the Saturn, I do not see them winning this time around.

     -Aaron Roszczewski, Editor-In-Chief

     The views in this editorial are not necessarily the views expressed by the nintendonline staff.