Peter Moore killed the Dreamcast – but it’s still alive in my house

As you all sit there playing with your PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii, it’s easy to forget the great consoles that have gone before. One that should be remembered by all is the Dreamcast, Sega’s last foray in to games hardware business that was culled before its time. And now we know who was responsible for that terrible decision.

The Dreamcast still ranks as my favourite console of all time. I know that it failed abysmally, and I know that anyone who didn’t own one at the time probably wonders what I’ve been smoking, but seriously, it’s a brilliant console that, for me, kicked off the current wave of gaming that the industry is still riding.

Peter Moore is the President of EA Sports, but before that he was head of Xbox, and even before that he was in charge at Sega of America. He’s now revealed that in his former role at Sega, it was he took the ultimate decision to kill off the Dreamcast, a console beloved by many and still alive and kicking in my living room.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Moore talks about those heady days when he believed the Dreamcast could succeed against all the odds.

The Dreamcast was an interesting beast. Sega was so financially strapped, and it had already launched in Japan to a sort of tepid, luke-warm reaction. These are big stakes games. I mean, when you’re launching a games console, you need hundreds of millions of dollars to get it off the ground.

Dreamcast was a phenomenal 18 months of pain, heartache, euphoria… We thought we had it, but then Playstation came out, that infamous issue of Newsweek with the Emotion Engine on the cover… and of course, EA didn’t publish which left a big hole, not only in sports but in other genres. We ended up that Christmas period not being able to get to where we needed to be – we weren’t far short, we just couldn’t get that critical mass.

We had a tremendous 18 months. Dreamcast was on fire – we really thought that we could do it. But then we had a target from Japan that said – and I can’t remember the exact figures – but we had to make N hundreds of millions of dollars by the holiday season and shift N millions of units of hardware, otherwise we just couldn’t sustain the business.

So on January 31 2001 we said Sega is leaving hardware – somehow I got to make that call, not the Japanese. I had to fire a lot of people, it was not a pleasant day.

Believe it or not, that’s just a fraction of the interview, but it makes for an interesting read, particularly in light of the current-gen console war raging between the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Being a fan of the Dreamcast, I was heartbroken when Sega announced it was stopping production and going all software, but I kept my Dreamcast and all the games I owned, and still play it to this day. And I actually think the current-gen consoles owe a big debt of gratitude to the Dreamcast and Sega.

The Dreamcast introduced the idea of online gaming on a home console, an idea that is now present on all three formats. It was also home to some of the best games around at the time, such as Shenmue, Metropolis Street Racer (later to evolve in to Project Gotham), Skies Of Arcadia, and Samba De Amigo.

The Dreamcast recently celebrated its ninth birthday (on September 9th), and the fact that it is still played by a die-hard set of fans shows me that while Peter Moore may have been the executioner, there is still life left in the old dog yet.

If you love the Dreamcast as much as I do, feel free to vote for it in our current poll to find the best console ever made. The PS3 is currently winning, but no-one has yet added Chuck Norris. Shame on you!

• The Guardian Peter Moore interview in full – Best bits and epilogue
• Sony happy to work with new EA Sports President, Peter Moore
• Microsoft’s Peter Moore bashes Sony, resigns as vice president
• Sonic The Hedgehog 4 on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and iPhone – But not Dreamcast 2
• Sega releasing a new games console? Worst. Idea. Ever.