Dreamcast

Dreamcast was launched in North America, at a price of $199, and garnered over 300,000 preorders,as well as 500,000 additional consoles in the first 2 weeks. In fact a record 225,132 sold during the first 24 hours. The strong sales were backed by strong launch titles like Soulcalibr, Sonic Adventure, and House of the Dead 2. Each console came standard with the console, a single controller, and connection peripherals. It did no however contain a Virtual Memory Unit (VMU), the Dreamcast version of a memory card with a screen, directional buttons, and two additional buttons. These often were used for supplemental downloadable games that were transfered onto the VMU and give the player the choice of playing them anywhere, a first for a Memory card. The console featured one of the first built in 56/k modems for online play and even web browsing. Online play for a console was nearly unheard of making this feature just one of a multitude of groundbreaking ideas.

Sega made 98.4 million dollars on combined hardware and software sales with Dreamcast launch-day. Four days afterward Sega sold 372,000 units which brought in 132 million dollars in sales. However the upcoming launch of the Playstation 2 loomed large in Sega's future. However when sony announced that only half of the previously announced consoles would be available at launch the Dreamcast saw a surge in sales of 156.6 percent between July 23 and Sept. 30 of 2000. however this would prove to be the systems last true push for market supremacy. After the launch of the Playstation 2, Dreamcast sales continued to plummet even with the reduction of the price of the console to $99. January 21st, of 2001 Sega announced it would discontinue production of their last console. Production ended in 2002 in North America, however Sega continued to produce new consoles available only through Sega Direct until 2007. During this time Sega still continued to produce games for their final platform as well as for other platforms like, the Playstation 2, and Xbox. The last Dreamcast games published by Sega of Japan were the 2007 releases Trigger Heart Exelica and Karous. However Sega released a home development kit for free named KallistiOS, and production of home-brew games are still produced and distributed over the internet. These include the 2009 unlicensed commercial releases Last Hope: Pink Bullets, Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles and DUX.

Hardware

• CPU: Hitachi SH-4

• Graphics: NEC PowerVR2 DC

• Memory:

  • 16 MB main RAM (SDRAM)

  • 8 MB video RAM

  • 2 MB sound RAM

• Sound:

  • 45MHz Yamaha 32-bit RISC CPU @ 40MIPS (more powerful than total power of PSX)

    • Based on ARM7TMDI Processor Core DSP.

  • Real-time effects (Reverb, delay, etc)

  • 64 sound channels

  • Surround Sound support.

  • Full realtime 3D sound support matching abilities of modern home theater systems.

  • Hardware-based audio compression

• Storage:

  • Proprietary 1 GD-Rom disc: Capacity 1.0GB (1024MB)

  • 12x Yamaha (1.8MB/s)

• Communication:

  • 33.6Kbytes/second modem (Original Asia/Japan)

  • 56Kbytes/second modem (USA, Europe, Asia/Japan after Sept. 1999)

  • Operating System:

    • Customized Microsoft Windows CE or Custom Sega OS (loaded at boot)