"If this is where Dreamcast gaming is headed, sign me up, Sega," IGN said of the first-ever online-playable console sports game, NFL2k1. "Stellar, stellar job, people."
NFL2k1 would be followed (mere months before the Dreamcast production lines were closed for good) by another first: the first ever console MMOG, Phantasy Star Online, developed by Sega's stars, Sonic Team. PSO reviewers praised innovative features like the chat lobby, group-based questing, cooperative play and deathmatch, features PC gamers had come to take for granted, but which had to date never before been seen on a console.
"Will it be something that we can build, where our competitors are so far behind in the learning experience of game design online... ?" Peter Moore, then President of Sega of America, asked IGN in December of 2000. "Absolutely, and when broadband comes, it'll be a breeze for us. If broadband ever comes."
Little did he know it was already knocking on his door. In fact, in retrospect, it appears that Peter Moore knew very little about the state of gaming in 2000, or the future of his own company's console. Perhaps he and Sega were simply looking too far ahead.
Microsoft has a problem because MSN still relies on the internet. If you're going to try to go out and get involved in a high-twitch type of gaming, unless they do something different ... sometimes it'll be good, and sometimes it won't work at all for them.
We've gone out with SegaNet and built up the server hubs - they're fond downstairs of saying that they own everything from the cables to the service to the electricity - because with online play, you've got to be able to create an environment that is less variable. There is nothing worse than inconsistency when playing online.
In 2000, Peter Moore was already thinking about the future of the internet, and a few years later, at Microsoft, he would help make it a reality
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Moore's 2000 interview with IGN continues:
We are fully committed to the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast sold more units in its first four days than Saturn sold in its first year. There's no comparison there. And after the dust settles on this holiday, the Dreamcast will be at a very critical mass that will continue to be attractive to third parties. That said, I know we will lose some third parties. ... Yes, it's been a transitional period all around for Sega, but the thought that once this Christmas is over that Sega will suddenly disappear out into the crowd ... Nope. Nothing would be further from the truth. Too many great Dreamcast games are in development for Christmas 2001 to ignore - this platform will keep growing and growing.
A month later, Sega would announce that production of the Dreamcast would discontinue; they had decided to exit the hardware business. The game, as they say, was over. Nick Gibson, Senior Internet and Games Analyst at Durlacher Research Ltd. suggests why:
Hardware manufacturers have a symbiotic relationship with game publishers which leaves them with the catch-22 problem of needing to convince publishers to commit resources to developing high quality titles for a platform whose growth is entirely dependent on the release of high quality titles. ... Thus Sega, weakened both financially but more importantly in the eyes of the games market by the failure of Saturn, 32X and MegaCD, launched Dreamcast with few expecting it to seriously challenge its principal rival Sony in the longer run. With little serious support from publishers as a result, the self-fulfilling prophecy of its demise as a retail product was more or less complete before it started.
