[jerf]

"The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good)."

If memory serves me... and it doesn't always terribly well, but still... I think you can make the even stronger argument that by the time the piracy was widespread and convenient, the console had already visibly failed. It took a while to get to the point where you could torrent an arbitrary game, burn it, and play it. You can tell that a console is going to fail to another before the last game is shipped. The PS2 was clearly going to crush the Dreamcast before it had literally passed it in numbers. I don't think the Dreamcast's fate would have materially changed if it was pirate-proof.

[surge]

I remember clearly that most people were holding off for a PS2, despite the fact that the initial release of games on the PS2 for that first year had graphics that were actually sub-par compared to the DC because it was so difficult to program for and had a weak line up of games that first year compared to what the DC had the first week it was out (a Sonic game and Soul Calibur).

I ended up owning both, but I got more mileage out of my DC that year or two I owned it then I did from the PS2 for a while (I don't think the PS2 really hit its stride until the 2nd year it was out).

[lukeschlather]

> It took a while to get to the point where you could torrent an arbitrary game

Especially so, given that the BitTorrent protocol hadn't even been designed when the Dreamcast was officially discontinued.

[notyourwork]

BitTorrent wasn’t how pirated material was distributed in those days. DCC over Irc and FTP were widely used at this time.

[jandrese]

Wasn't it LimeWire/Kazaa? My early P2P history is a little fuzzy.

The big issue is that so many people were still on modems back then that downloading a DC game wasn't easy. Plus public WiFi wasn't really a thing yet. It was the kids on college campuses who were connected to brand new and shiny Ethernet networks that really went nuts.

[notyourwork]

These applications weren't really where piracy derived, these applications along with a cable modem made it possible for point and click piracy. Similar to Napster. The scene which as others pointed at actually started in newsgroups and shifted to IRC and FTP was where piracy was extremely prevalent.

[sizzle]

I used Morpheus I think then bearshare

[freeflight]

Or simply uploading to some free webspace hoster by breaking the iso up into many smaller rar/zip achieves.

[illegalsmile]

Also newsgroups.

[borkt]

Also usenet