[ginko]

> Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it.

I'm not convinced. I only heard about the ability of playing regular CD-ROMs on Dreamcast way after it was already dead. If anything Dreamcast is a great example of terrible mismanagement by SEGA.

And if CD copying killed the Dreamcast then the PSX would have been dead 3 times over. I knew tons of people that shared burned games for that one.

[T-hawk]

The difference there was that the Dreamcast could play burned CD-R copies unmodded, while the PSX needed a hardware mod to break the protection against that, a significant barrier to entry. Later it could be done with a plug-in to the expansion port, but early PSX mod chips required soldering.

The Dreamcast also came four years later, which mattered; many more people had broadband connections capable of downloading a full CD-ROM in 2000 than in 1996.

That said, I agree with your first point - Dreamcast piracy really only became a thing after it was clear it would lose the market battle to the other consoles. Piracy didn't kill it, at most hastened the death by a few months.

[anthk]

Still, the PSX was pirated a lot more. On broadband, even in 2000 it wasn't as easy as to pirate N64 roms in order to be played into a PC.

The DC lost to the PSX and later the PS2 with the builtin DVD video player killed it.

[aikinai]

Just another anecdote but I was a kid at the time and remember the selling point for Dreamcast among people I knew was specifically that you could just copy the games. Everyone had stacks of CDs they’d copy for new console owners.