Dreamcast celebrates 10th birthday

Whilst fans of Liverpudlian pop may well celebrate September 9th 2009 for other reasons, EA Sports boss – and self-processed murderer of the Dreamcast – Peter Moore has reminded us all that today is in fact the 10th birthday of Sega’s famous Dreamcast console.

Furthermore, in a eulogy to the console on his blog, the EA Sports boss has emphasised the debts owed to the Dreamcast by its many network-enabled successors.

It certainly doesn’t feel like a decade has gone by since this innovative console ushered in the era of online gaming, albeit through a 56K modem, and thus changed the face of interactive entertainment forever,” Moore enthused.

I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that the Dreamcast and it’s online network laid the ground for what we all take for granted today – online game play, linking innumerable gamers from around the world to play, compete and collaborate, as well as enabling new content to be delivered in addition to that which was delivered on the disc.”

Dreamcast still enjoys new releases from time to time, mostly of the 2D shooter variety. The most recent was DUX, which was released by HUDCAST.net in June of this year.

Moore also responded to those who still claim that EA’s decision not to publish titles on Sega’s console was one of the key reasons for its early demise.

Over the years, I have been asked many times whether EA’s decision not to develop and publish games for the Dreamcast was a major contributing factor in its early demise,” he confessed. That we will never know.

But it is hard to argue with EA’s rationale at the time and the ultimate outcome – get in position for the impending arrival of the Playstation 2, deploying all resources against the newest version of Sony’s already wildly successful video game platform. You can’t argue with the results. EA came out of the blocks strongly in support of the PS2, and enjoyed tremendous success throughout the key years of that console’s life cycle

Elsewhere in the piece, Moore also sees fit to retract his earlier claims that he was the one who made the final decision to kill off the Dreamcast.

As we emerged from the Christmas selling season of 2000 and collated the sales data in the following January, it was evident that we were falling short of the critical mass target we had set ourselves for continued investment,” he claims.

The decision was made, from Japan, to pull the plug and begin the transition to becoming a multi-platform third party developer and publisher. The call on the decision was made by SOJ. The conference call to announce the decision was conducted by SOA.”