Dreamcast Disappearing Act

Written by Daniel Pelfrey on January 12, 2001

Dreamcast Disappearing Act: Where have all the cowboys third parties gone?

Is Capcom the only developer still bringing quality third party content to Sega's machine? The Dreamcast is still around, still has an active user base, and still has games coming out. Yet none of this seems to matter. Most of the third parties that previously had titles announced for Dreamcast have either slipped down on the release calendar, or have been axed altogether.

This is personally disheartening, since there were several titles that I had been looking forward to playing on my Dreamcast. Sega's machine is still the one that I play the most often these days, and the one that has the most games I look forward to in the next few months.

All of this changes of course in November, when Microsoft releases the Xbox console, and Nintendo unleashes the (soon to be phenomenal) GAMECUBE upon the gaming masses. With Sega producing content actively for the former competition, many companies that saw Sega's Dreamcast as a viable console, now look to where Sega is headed itself.

One only has to look at Nintendo's announcement of the УDolphinФ system to find a correlation in today's videogame marketplace. Once Nintendo finally made the announcement that it was working on a new platform, almost every third party that was still making N64 content stopped. There have been a few games for the N64 released in the last 6 months that were not released by Nintendo, but that number was few in comparison to the number a year before that.

After Sega made that fateful announcement on January 31, many of the other third party companies looked long and hard at their upcoming releases. With the videogame industry in a slump, publishers can't afford as many games not to sell really well. This might also be why we have seen so many sequels recently as well. Not many companies can afford to take the risk nowadays.

Crave, Infogrames, Titus each have a game coming out shortly, but what about after the summer? What is coming out for the Christmas buying season? Not much. Why? Because videogame companies make the most money during the holiday shopping season, and with two new consoles launching DAYS(!) from each other, it's no surprise that videogame publishers have hopped on the Уbright and shiny newФ bandwagon. Sega is of course no exception. It has games that should be coming out on rival platforms before the year is over.

УIf Sega isn't concentrating on Dreamcast, why should we?Ф You can almost hear them in the boardrooms. The same thing has happened with the N64. While many third parties abandoned that platform ages ago, look at the release list now. Even Nintendo doesn't have much coming out. It almost looks as if Nintendo isn't supporting the N64 anymore, instead, focusing on the future with its GAMECUBE. Look at how Nintendo has focused almost solely on Game Boy Advance. The next two months will be filled with GBA news, and then in August, we will be seeing the GAMECUBE content start to be reported from Spaceworld.

Each third party that does have a confirmed Dreamcast title (one with a release date) has a small number of games being released for the system. At this year's E3, the Dreamcast was very hard to find on the show floor. Every company's press release mentioned how many games would be coming for GAMECUBE, PS2, or Xbox.

What does this mean for you, the loyal Dreamcast player? It means that you will have to buy more consoles than you had planned. My advice? Save up for the GAMECUBE, and ask for Xbox from Santa. If you don't have a PS2 yet (shortages are over now) then you can wait until next year, unless you need a DVD player.

The only thing I can equate this to would be if Playboy stopped throwing their own party. If they did, and then went to where somebody else was throwing a party, you can bet the Playboy table would be the most crowded with everybody trying to get a glimpse of what was up. There are still some quality titles coming for Dreamcast, just not many of them from third parties. The Sega party is almost over. Time to start looking for the next one.