[titusjohnson]

According to my memory of the time, the Dreamcast launched a bit too early compared to the PS2. The Dreamcast was trying to sell games and systems right when the PS2 marketing engine went into full swing. The marketing hype for PS2 was huge, everyone I knew was talking about how many millions of pixels it would push, how the multi-core architecture would make everything else obsolete, and of course, how it was backwards compatible with existing libraries.

I knew one guy that had a Dreamcast, everyone else saved their pennies for a PS2 and made do with their existing PS1.

[ajmurmann]

You touch on a really important point here that I feel is totally underreported: marketing. My friend group all had Saturns or wanted them. I remember it being a big topic for us how there were constantly PlayStation ads everywhere while they were pretty much absent for the Saturn, especially on TV where Saturn ads existed but were terrible and and they were almost never run (this was in Germany). Our own narrative always had been that it was lack of marketing and bad marketing that killed the Saturn.

I'd love to see some actual data on marketing spent in different regions for the consoles.

[xgkickt]

There was a rumor that in the UK SEGA pretty much spent their entire Dreamcast marketing budget on the Arsenal sponsorship. Would like to know how close to the truth that was.

[ac2u]

I believe the PS2 marketing hype was further bolstered by great initial sales in Japan, because it was a reasonably priced DVD movie player.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps2-primarily-used-as-dvd-...

[perardi]

Oh I so remember that, and can even find mainstream media articles to back that up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/technology/playstation-2-...

Same thing with the PS3—it was a lot of bang-for-the-buck for Blu-rays when it debuted. (Not that Blu-ray took the world by storm like DVDs, but still.)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20992215/playstation-3-ps...

[Izkata]

Yep, I was that kid who got a Dreamcast for Christmas (my parents' compromise since my brothers and I wanted different systems) and I remember the same about commercials for the PS2 having just started.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Yep, I was that kid who got a Dreamcast for Christmas

There are dozens of us!

[fomine3]

128bit!