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But in Japan, they originally stated a goal of three million
units in the first year. The userbase in Japan, after nearly three years, stands
at 2.7 million. The goal for the US after two years was 10 million, now they are
at 3.5. Shenmue was supposed to be Japan's first 1 million unit seller, and it
sold 290,000. Crazy Taxi was projected to sell 500,000, but only moved one-fifth
of that. Similar stories for Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Eternal Arcadia,
etc. Sonic Team wanted to sell 1 million copies of PSO world wide, it currently
stands at less than half of that. I could go on for a while now, but you get the
point.
--
I can tell you as SegaWeb's news director, a shareholder in Sega, and as a
finance major (and honors student) that Sega has had MAJOR financial troubles
over the past four years. They lost nearly $2 billion, missed every single sales
target they set for the Dreamcast, and had to act very quickly in order to save
the company.
They also enacted a policy, as of last year, of being as frank and open with
shareholders as possible in order to build trust in the company and management.
In this context, it would highly unethical to discontinue the company's main
source of revenue without telling anyone, not to mention the logistic
difficulties. To suggest that they could or should have done so is
off-the-charts wrong.
--
From a financial standpoint, if Sega had continued to manufacture the Dreamcast,
they would have run out of cash in about six months. The were up against the
wall and needed a full year to transition into a third party, so they made the
decision right after the holiday 2000 numbers were out. (the announcement was
made on Jan. 31) Had they waited any longer, even a few months, they would be
gone, or purchased by another company. |
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