The hypothetical post-2001 Dreamcast line-up

In March 2001, Sega announced that they would soon discontinue production on the Dreamcast, and become a third-party publisher, releasing games on rival platforms.
What if they kept going, though? Here, I imagine the exclusives that Dreamcast owners may have been able to look forward to.

Whatever happened, I don't see how the Dreamcast could have kept going much past 2003, given the significance of the right analogue stick and higher capacity disc formats. If Sega kept going as a hardware manufacturer, I expect they'd have launched the Dreamcast 2 around then.

The Dreamcast was closely tied to the arcade scene, which was rapidly declining by the 2000s. There were big hits through the decade in Japan though, and they were largely rhythm games. I expect Sega would have been the first to chase a home version of Taiko no Tatsujin.
In world where Sega were trucking on with the Dreamcast, they would have supported Yu Suzuki's pet project through lacklustre sales and released this almost two decades earlier
Debatable, but I think it's worth considering that Capcom's jump towards Nintendo might have never happened if Sega were still in the game. Power Stone, Marvel vs Capcom and Code Veronica showed their support for Sega. The Resi 1 remake was largely justified by Nintendo fans getting 2 on the N64, while missing out on the original title, but I think whatever the 2002/03 Resident Evil game was going to be, it might have been a Dreamcast release.

4 Comments


9 months ago

Requesting a note on Soulcalibur II detailing who the Dreamcast-specific guest character would have been

9 months ago

@Dreamboat See, I don't know if there would have been PS2, Xbox and GameCube versions at all if the series didn't have to jump ship, but if you're looking for a fun answer... I don't know... Vectorman?

9 months ago

No Gunvalkyrie?

9 months ago

@Drax I'll add that, thanks. Wikipedia even says they were working on a Dreamcast version.


Last updated: