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Did The Dreamcast Really Fail In Sales

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by itsstillthinking, Dec 26, 2017.

  1. itsstillthinking

    itsstillthinking

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    Was doing a lots of research for a project and i came across startling numbers that seemed to reaffirm the idea in my head that the death of the Dreamcast is grossly over exaggerated. The quote below is from the Dreamcast-Talk Post's that started all of this and is lots of more info there, i also condensed it a quick video if people don't want to read all of this and see some of the "Documentary" that got this ball rolling
    Video: http://youtu.be/Ee1zwLN1D5A
    Post: http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10445

    "One question that i always thought was how many units did Sega ship/ manufacture from 98 to 2001? The reason i have thought about this is because so many sites list different figures, some say as high as 11 million and some like Wikipedia as low as 8.2 million. After doing some extensive research i found the main number people refer too is from the 2001 Sega Annual Report (https://segaretro.org/images/8/80/AnnualReport2001_English.pdf page 14) This number in my opinion is out of date, this number of units represent the number of Dreamcast's Sold until march 31st 2001. Those who know the Dreamcast from around this time know that shortly after the spring of 2001 Sega slashed the price to 50 Dollars in order to sell of excess inventory. We know that in west Dreamcast hardware was sold until sometime in 2002 until most inventory was finally depleted (this of course depends on where you live ect. Adam K says that His local Toy R Us was selling Dreamcast stuff until 2005 when the Xbox 360 came out). From doing more internet sleuthing i found out in 2002 Dreamcast sales still reached almost a million units (http://segaretro.org/images/f/f0/AnnualReport2002_SemiAnnual_English.pdf page 7) this report in brief states this: from 2001 to 2002 Sega had Sold 130,000 units in Japan and In America 530,000 units. They then go on to say they wish to in the Holiday season on 2002 to sell the remaining inventory for these regions which are 40,000 for Japan and 230 000 For the US. It should be noted that since this does not include Europe (In which the Dc was almost as popular as in North America and even lasted longer) we should assume the sales figures should be similar to the Us. This would total to (Not including Europe) to 9.13 million units. If we say Europe is a little lower to America than it Comes to 10 Million units. The 2003 report does not say anything about Dreamcast Sales so i have no Accurate info, if anyone has any please share! Anyway i think stuff like Wikipedia should be updated ect to match this more realistic number as it makes the Dc look pretty bad and may elude to that it failed (which i don't think so which is a entirely different topic)"

    "One other interesting note is that according to the 2000 report (http://segaretro.org/images/9/94/AnnualReport2000_English.pdf page 12) is that total sales in dc hardware are 4.65 million, this would mean that between 2000 and early 2001 Sega sold 3.55 million consoles even after it being retired, this is more evidence (to me anyways) that the dreamcast did not fail as hard in the holidays of 2000 as everyone is told."

    "Some one else also did some research and found some similar numbers of 9.13 million (http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?29320-Accurate-(probably)-Dreamcast-hardware-sales) however accurate Europe sales seems to be missing here too, also here is a new 2000 report here https://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/ir/release/pdf/past/sega/2001/20001027e.pdf"

    From the Video:

    "The fact that Sega was loosing so much money during this time would lead one to believe that it had to be the Dreamcast that was loosing the money, but the problem goes deeper than that. The problem really started back in the early 90's when SOJ forced SOA & Tom K to launch the 32x and then later to launch the Saturn early against Tom's wishes. Then of course there is the famous E3 97 comment that more or less killed the Saturn in the west (Despite my love for the Saturn) this caused Sega in the west to have no real source of income during most of 97, all of 98 and most of 99 and if one looks as Sega finances from around the time you find that Sega was in the red by the summer of 97 not to mention the Arcade industry dying (Remember even though we think of Sega as home console manufacture they where and still mostly a Arcade company) so everything was against Sega at the time."

    While opinion on these will widely vary i think its safe to say that the Dreamcast did not die at the very least as bad as people say, i would love to hear your opinion and would love if someone could find more concrete numbers of Euorpe's Sales as sill to this day i have found no official statement from Sega on the Matter
     
  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    History of the Sega Dreamcast/Decline and legacy

    The reason European Dreamcast figures are hard to come by is a lack of (English) sources on the interwebs (a.k.a. nobody has scanned later issues of the UK official Dreamcast magazine).

    We have a good chunk of the rest of Europe sorted:

    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Dreamcast:_Das_Offizielle_Magazin_scans
    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Dreamcast:_Le_Magazine_Officiel_scans
    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Dreamplanet_scans
    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Sega_Magazin_scans
    https://retrocdn.net/Category:Revista_Oficial_Dreamcast_scans

    you might find some numbers, though realistically we need more French/German/Spanish speakers to contribute. I am none of these things.


    Incidentally we don't have many 2001/2002-dated multi-format magazine scans either.
     
  3. Pirate Dragon

    Pirate Dragon

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    9.13m includes Europe as Sega sold their European inventory to Bigben in the year ending March 31st 2001. See here for Sega's European shipments.
     
  4. itsstillthinking

    itsstillthinking

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    Thanks Black Squirrel (You a legend among all of us who contribute to Sega Retro :D ) Be cool if we could all find definitive numbers and also for other regions like Brazil. And also thanks Pirate Dragon! Did not realize SOE sold it to Bigben (was it them that published the later Pal DC games like HH?) and iv seen that post as well but those numbers are a little sketchy with EU and other regions.
     
  5. Pirate Dragon

    Pirate Dragon

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  6. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

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    I can only say Ithat I'm spanish and my DC's 16th anniversary will be in a few days, as I got it late on Christmas 2001-2002. I managed to get technical support for it after the official service ended a year later, as they still had spare pieces for its repair. I bought my 1st hand games on 2002 too.

    EDIT: At full price both the console and most of the games, I must say.
     
  7. itsstillthinking

    itsstillthinking

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    Very nice find! always great to see this info spread around