Although I am now a solid Dreamcast supporter, I still stand firmly behind my past anti-Sega diatribes regarding their business practices. Although they showed enough marketing savvy in 2000 to justify owning a Dreamcast (they did bring out more solid, A+ titles than either Sony or Nintendo, after all), here they go again with their stupid, stupid decisions. Someone in Sega marketing should be fired.

Looking through gaming news sites during the past few days, I came across two pieces about Sega that angered me substantially. First, they announced that their Genesis Classics disc, containing 12 games form the 16-bit era, would be a pack-in title only, and not sold separately as many old-school gamers like myself were hoping. This disc contains classic games like Golden Axe, Sonic, Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage 2. I’m willing to bet that most gamers who would want to own a compilation disc like that have already purchased a Dreamcast. Of course, rather than bitching about it incessantly, we’ll just wait for the 18-and-under crowd to trade in their Sega Classics Packs at Game Hits or Funcoland and then pick them up for a song. Still, it’s a bad, bad move on Sega’s part to dismiss their core audience like that.

Next, I read an article about Sega pulling the demo discs from the Official Dreamcast Magazine, to be sold separately. Now, this one didn’t really bother me so much, especially if they sell the demo discs for the same price or less than the magazine. I feel pretty safe making the statement that most people buy the magazine solely for the demos. I know I do. The magazine itself is really pretty flimsy – the last one I picked up was so skinny I could practically floss with it! However, the reason that I see this as a bad business move is because of the way it makes Sega look to the public – they can’t even afford to support the Official DC magazine with demo discs anymore. I feel bad for the people working on that magazine, many of whom have been bumped around from mag to mag over the past few years. Taking the demo disc away will probably kill the publication, and those people will be forced to relocate yet again.

Sega has yet to show any killer games scheduled for 2001 beyond this month’s Phantasy Star Online, and there’s already controversy surrounding that game due to Sega’s recent announcement that it won’t support online play with a broadband connection. This shows that Sega is out of touch with current standards of the online community – from my PC online gaming I’d guess that about 1/3 of gamers are connected to the internet with some sort of broadband adaptor (cable, DSL, T3) as opposed to dial-up. This means that a lot of players are shelling out $40 or more per month for the privilege of blazing fast connections, and Sega expects them to pay another ISP $20 more every month for a slower dial-up connection if they want to play PSO online.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I’d really like to see Sega succeed. They deserve it for taking risks and releasing niche games like Seaman and Samba, but some of these decisions point to a lack of funding (not selling the classics disc separately, removing the ODCM demo disc). Some of the industry people I’ve talked to about this subject seem to think that Sega won’t make it through another year in their current form. The general consensus is that Sega will end up as a software maker, dropping out of the console race after Dreamcast goes under. Only time will tell, but I think we’ll all have a better idea of Sega’s prospects for the coming year after this May’s E3 showing, which could make or break the company in the eyes of many gamers, myself included.