<News> Sega Dreamcast end of line . . . (?)

[saint]

(Front page news discussion thread)

[M.Lanza]

Wow! It's kind of amazing that sega stood behind the dreamcast for that long.
Oh well. I guess it's time to buy up the remaining stock of dreamcasts at the pawn
shop for future spare parts.

[SithMaster]

or buy used ones hoping for a broadband adapter someone left installed instead of the lame dialup.

[M.Lanza]

I just celebrated by getting a bba from ebay.

 

[saint]

What use is a bba these days? (Genuine curiousity, not an editorial comment).

[SithMaster]

aside from controversial tasks they can be used for phastasy star if you find a server (i know there are a few around).

[M.Lanza]

Apart from what sithmaster mentioned,
it is one of the holy grails of dreamcast collecting.

[saint]

Ah didn't know there were still any game servers running for DC games. Cool.

[DarkBubble]

They announced some months back that they'd ceased production of the GD-ROM discs.  I pretty much took that for the end.  Someone had been pushing an online petition over on GameFAQs, trying to get them to reconsider.  It was a waste of time, really, because there's no profit in keeping a factory open for 3-4 new titles with low print runs per year.  I understood his tenacity, but he'd barely stop short of throwing a fit if you laid out the business aspects to him.  It would have been better to push for Sega to allow licensees to press to standard CD-ROM, which would be far more economical, especially when you consider that most of the games that are being released these days for Dreamcast are below 200 MB.  Sega's going to cut corners where they can.  Their Lindbergh arcade hardware is a good example, being PC-based.

It's a shame that competition and hype was so strong around the time of the DC's life.  Between the home hardware and the Naomi, they would have had a great position otherwise.

[SithMaster]

the servers are fan based i believe.  the bba are worth so much because less were made than the dialup which came with the system.

[horseboy]

aside from controversial tasks

Of what tasks do you speak?

[SithMaster]

well the bba were used to make isos for download.  using the stock dialup would take 20 hours to copy to a pc so the bba was used to speed things up.  i would call this controversial since you are making copies of a game to distribute online.  some may cite this act as leading to the dc's ultimate failure as a console.

[thennomeking]

Ding dong the witch is dead...wait a minute they stopped supporting the Saturn as well.  Damn.

In all seriousness the Dreamcast was a bit of a beast for a disc based console.  Ive seen them go through figurative hells that destroyed PSX/PS2s yet they came out scathed but playable.  Not quite Nintendo durability but quite impressive.

[Dave_K.]

Another last nail in the coffin for the Dreamcast?  There are still japanese game companies releasing games for the console with Sega's blessing/licensing.  Karous was just released last month, and Trigger Heart Excelica the month before that.  The fact is Sega's Naomi platform is still popular in arcades today (in Japan) so ports are possible with newly release Naomi games since its essentially the same hardware.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-cn-49-en-70-1s2a.html
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-cn-49-en-70-1qgc.html

[horseboy]

But how are they going to keep releasing games if they stop pressing GD-roms?

[Level42]

Well.....I don't know, but I've got a couple of "back up"s of DM games that are buned on very normal CD-R's.......GD-roms are not that special are they ?

I think it's amusing to call the seizing of the GD-ROM the nail in the coffin for the DC. The GD-ROM was the nail from the very start because of the extremley easy "backing up"....

[Goz]

Well.....I don't know, but I've got a couple of "back up"s of DM games that are buned on very normal CD-R's.......GD-roms are not that special are they ?

I think it's amusing to call the seizing of the GD-ROM the nail in the coffin for the DC. The GD-ROM was the nail from the very start because of the extremley easy "backing up"....

All of the new games that have been trickling out for the Dreamcast other than some home brew over the last couple of years are because the NAOMI arcade system used extremely similar hardware specs and GD-ROM drives. If the NAOMI standard media GD-ROMS is no longer made then ultimately newly developed games (other than home brew) will not be released. That is the nail in the coffin.