It was September 10, 1999 – the day after the Sega Dreamcast’s US launch.
West Coast rapper Del the Funky Homosapien had just finished a gaming-tinged set at a San Francisco club ("Marvel Vs Capcom, beyond fathom // Tell the truth, Playstation ain't ready to have ‘em") and now Peter Moore, Sega of America’s senior vice president of marketing, stood on stage, ready to reveal the console’s day-one sales figures to the world.
He lifted paper flaps covering each digit, one by one. The crowd got louder as the millions stacked up. It roared as he flicked the last flap aside to show a total of nearly $98 million in sales. He declared it the “biggest launch in entertainment history” – and, crucially, bigger than the US launches of the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64.
It was, he tells IGN, a moment of “euphoria”.
Less than 18 months later, Moore, by that point Sega of America’s president, told an industry conference call that Sega was leaving the console business altogether. "It was tragic," he says.
An 18-year era of Sega hardware, which included four of the best gaming consoles of all time, was over.
It’s tempting to blame the swift demise of the much-loved Dreamcast on something easy and obvious, perhaps that EA refused to put its games on the console, or that the impending PlayStation 2 spooked prospective buyers. But from speaking to Moore and Simon Cox, the former editor-in-chief of Official Dreamcast Magazine, it’s clear the Dreamcast’s death was complicated, messy, and – arguably – inevitable, even as Moore stepped onto that San Francisco stage.
