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After the limited success in Japan of the Saturn and the near zero impact the Saturn had in the western markets, Sega armed with a new team of chief executives decide that they would have one final go at making their name stay in the hardware market of console gaming. Sega by this time had lost vast amounts of money through the Saturn and the development of the Dreamcast was not cheap. Any mistakes would spell very bad news for Sega. The Dreamcast was to be everything the Saturn was not and would leave the Playstation standing in every department. Sega was to re-enter the console wars with a fresh new approach, a new console and the most original games ever created. Sega's new approach would be to bring the first online gaming console to the home -and they did.
In the early stages the Dreamcast was called the Katana Project. When it was unveiled it's specs at the time were more powerful than Sega Model 3 arcade board.
But the main emphasis of the Dreamcast was to gives the worlds first Internet gameplay through a console. Again, many years ahead of Sony, Sega thought that this would be the next feature required in consoles and so their machine would be able to capture the market. Sega had already had some background with online play with the Saturn and it’s Netlink system.
In 1998 the Dreamcast was released in Japan with an initial price of . Games available on launch were Sonic Adventure, July, Godzilla Generations, Sega Rally 2.
In all other territories the Dreamcast launch broke all sales records. People queued outside of retailers for hours at the midnight launches. Outside Japan there were far more games available at launch time but the most popular were Sega Rally 2 and Sonic Adventure.
