Dreamcast had terrible timing, in my opinion. That, and the controller was obnoxious. But wrt timing, the Dreamcast launched in between generations. Console generations tend to last at least 5 years. It was harder for people to afford multiple consoles back then, and if you had purchased an N64 or a PS1 in '96-'98, it was probably too soon to buy a second or third console in 1999, when Dreamcast launched. It had far too little time as the best hardware before PS2 and Xbox both launched in the following year and a half with better graphics and DVD support, leapfrogging it in the process.
It had far too little time as the best hardware before PS2
It didn't matter because Sony had already won the hype war, EA forsook the DC, and the built in DVD player was something of a killer app itself.
BUT If you go back and look at the first year or two of PS2 titles, they were not technically superior to the Dreamcast.
IMO the Dreamcast had 1-2 years as the best hardware on the market, and another 1-2 years on par with the PS2.
PS2 was far superior "on paper" but in reality, the difference was not as large as the numbers suggested at a glance. The Dreamcast did two things the PS2 didn't:
- Hidden face removal, making it vastly more efficient than the PS2 (most polygons in a scene are actually hidden by other polygons, so if you avoid rendering them that's an enormous win [1]
- Free hardware texture decompression, so it needed much less video memory [2]
Those points were subtle, though. The gaming press and internet chatter at the time was largely (and understandably) oblivious to tech subtleties like that.
In the end, obviously, the PS2 actually was superior once developers (and particularly middleware developers) mastered its tricky CPU. But I didn't consider it to really surpass the DC for a while.
That, and the controller was obnoxious.
I liked the controller unlike many, but the failure to include a second analog stick was a real miss. The sad thing is, the DC's controller protocol had support for dual analog inputs. They just didn't forsee the need.
The PS2 was backwards compatible with the PS1, so virtually all PS1 games from their huge library continued to be playable on PS2. And PS1 games were still shipping in 2000, 2001, and 2002.
Meanwhile, PS2 may have had a poor launch lineup but by 2001 it was rapidly improved with Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto 3 (by itself a killer app), Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, Jak and Daxter, every sports franchise you could want, other smaller hits like Devil May Cry, Max Payne, etc. Meanwhile the Dreamcast was discontinued by March of 2001, just 5 months after PS2's North American debut.
