Former SoA President Peter Moore still ‘angry’ at Sony over Dreamcast
Moore adds that the SEGA Dreamcast lives on through Xbox.
During yesterday’s Xbox Pioneers roundtable, former SEGA of America President Peter Moore reinforced his belief that Sony killed the Dreamcast.
The Dreamcast was ahead of its time, and it sadly didn’t quite make it in the face of the impending PlayStation FUDing — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — that came along. And [Sony] did it brilliantly.
Peter Moore
The term “FUD” is a marketing term associated with creating fear, uncertainty and doubt over choosing a competitor’s product. Moore believes Sony’s use of this technique is one of the main reasons the SEGA Dreamcast failed over the PlayStation 2.
To a degree, he’s right. One of the main competitive advantages PlayStation has always had is exclusivity. To this day, Sony pays top dollar to publish games exclusive for PlayStation. I mean, the only reason I bought a PlayStation 4 was to play games like The Last of Us and Spider-Man.
Sony expertly crafted their marketing campaign for the PS2 to create mystery and intrigue. This technique created a fear of missing out amongst consumers. Moore believes that’s a primary reason why after the launch of the PlayStation 2, interest in the Dreamcast plummeted.
How Xbox kept the Dreamcast’s dream alive
After his time at SEGA, Moore joined Microsoft to help Xbox compete against its competitors. In Moore’s opinion, Microsoft picked up where SEGA left off. The Dreamcast was ahead of its time by being the first console to allow online multiplayer. Although it never took off with SEGA, he believed that Microsoft shared the vision to create an online gaming community via Xbox Live.
As the Dreamcast unfortunately faded into the sunset, the baton was passed to Xbox. As we started to take off with Xbox Live and believed in this idea of gaming together online, there’s still a little bit of a legacy of the Sega Dreamcast in there somewhere.
Peter Moore
You can watch the entire roundtable talk from Microsoft’s Alumni Network below. The video features former Xbox executives Peter Moore, Robbie Bach and Ed Fries. In addition, 343 Industries’ current studio head Bonnie Toss and former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime join the conversation.
Via VentureBeat
