Sega released the Saturn early in America. Many people didn't know it was out yet, and those who'd been planning to save up money until it came out were out of luck--they didn't have enough when it was released early. Since no one was supposed to know it was out early only certain stores were selling it, and because of its exclusiveness, the Saturn's price was immensely high in its early days. The early arrival of the Saturn did almost no good for Sega. Only intent Sega fanatics determined to buy a Sega system no matter what the outcome (or rich people who could buy whatever they wanted) bought the system when it was young. Apparently there weren't many of those people. Because of its high price, many people decided to wait for the playstation. Their reasoning was, "Why spend so much money for a new system when I know another one is going to be here in a few months and could be better?" So they waited, and since the PSX had more games/was cheaper/had more hype/had more 3rd party support/was said to be better in many reviews, Americans turned their backs on the summer.
The Dreamcast, however, has had speculation for well over a year, and was offically announced by Sega six months ago--six months before its Japanese release. It will have had plenty of time to gather hype by its American release. Everyone's curious about it--hardcore Sega fanatics can import it from Japan, and American casual gamers can see previews of the games in magazines, and web publications by the fan importers. Sega will make sure everyone knows when it's released. Price may be an issue, but not because of limited supply or exclusive distribution, but because of high demand. Sega will certainly take this into account, but there will probably still be a few people left out in the cold. But such is always the way with a new system. Prices will most likely go down soon.
Another mistake Sega made with the Saturn, which they're bound not to repeat, is poor marketing. There wasn't much advertizing for their new 32-bit system before its release, not compared to the hype surrounding the playstation. The Saturn wasn't as well-known pre-release as the PSX. Although Sony was new to video games, they were already a huge corporation (their size overall dwarfing Sega's), and since they were expanding into new frontiers many gamers became curious. Because Sony was such a huge corporation, many of the third party publishers were quick to jump to Sony's side--they were sure that a corporation of Sony's magnitude would be sure to be successful, and devloping for Sega could be dangerous. In reality, though, it was those third parties' decisions that was one of the influencing factors in creating the PSX's dominance.
With the Dreamcast, there's an entirely different story. Because there was so much info and rumors over a year before its release, the average American gamers is being exposed to Sega's upcoming megaplatform. It's certainly making a name for themselves, with characters from Sonic and Virtua Fighter appearing on the cover of gaming magazines for the first time in years. There is coverage in virtually every current gaming magazine, almost entirely positive. Because Sega's partnering up with such well-known names as Microsoft and Hitachi, loads of high-calibre third parties have contracts for Dreamcast development. There are sure to be many games for the Dreamcast, as there were for the playstation. The internet is blasted full of rumors and webpages dedicated to the future 128-bit monster. Gamers in America, not just the Sega freaks, but everyone, are excited about the upcoming possibilities. Everyone wants in.
Another example of the problem that Sega created with the Saturn is the difficulty to create/program games for it. Though mutiple processors sound like a good thing at first, it's really quite difficult to make them all work in synch for desired results. Certainly the programming for Saturn games would have to be significantly different, probably more complex, than the same game on the PSX. Many developers didn't want to bother with this, and preferred the easier, if slightly less powerful (which of course is a totally debatable concept) PSX. Even if the PSX was worse, which it wasn't necessarily, third-party publishers jumped to it because they knew they could make, and therefore sell, more games more quickly. Even worse, the Saturn's 3-D capabilities were generally regarded as worse than the PSX's, though it could do great 2-D games. Unfortunately, just around the time these two 32-bit systems were released, 3-D games were popping up.
Again, Sega has learned from their mistake. Sega's using a Hitachi processor to ensure familiarity with most developers. And this one is definately very powerful even compared with today's PC standards. With a customized Windows operating system, programming this powerhouse shoud be no problem, even for making complex 3-D games, as one obviously can see exists when looking at games like Sonic Adventure and Geist Force. This is another contributing factor for third-party developers to switch over from Sony to Sega. A bit part probably has to do with the industrial giants involved--namely Microsoft and Hitachi. Microsoft is even bigger than Sony, and it's a basic rule that Microsoft doesn't fail. Though the sucess of the DC can't be entirely credited to them. There has to be a reason why Microsoft decided to partner up with the loser of the current video games wars--because they knew what a future hit the Dreamcast would be.
And, finally, the issue of the release games is brought up. The only popular Saturn games upon its arrival were Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter. Those these were excellent at the time, there were obvious differences between the graphics and sound from the arcade to the Saturn. And even these 2 Sega games weren't the biggest of hits in America. These games had groups of devoted fans, but certainly Mortal Kombat and Crus'n USA were more widely known. Since Sega's only recognizeable release games were those that they'd developed, they were pretty much on their own. With the PSX the case was the complete opposite. Sony has never made a single piece of video game software, yet their system took off! Why? Because of all the companies producing for them. Though half the games are complete crap, they're rushed out so quickly in such abundance that there are bound to be some good, or at least attractive, games. Sony's work was done over three years ago. Now all they have to do is sit back, rest on their laurels, and rake in the cash.
For its Japanese release, the Dreamcast has Virtua Fighter 3tb, immsnesely popular in Japan--the number 1 fighting game--plus several high-quality games developed by outside sources. There is an even mix of games from inside and outside. Sega has always been counted on to develop excellent games, but that's not all that sells a system. Sure, Virtua Fighter and VF2, Daytona, Fighting Vipers, and NiGHTS were all excellent Saturn games (though the arcade conversions had obvious graphical differences), but no one else bothered to make any good games, sinced it was so hard and expensive, and they most likely wouldn't have been very noticeable. Sega needed one tradmark for the Saturn that everyone would've lapped up--Sonic would've been a good idea--but they failed to deliver. Sure there was Sonic Jam, Sonic 3-D blast, and Sonic R, but they were all quite different than what everyone was hoping for, essentially the trashed Sonic X-treme project. There will be a traditional Sonic for the Dreamcast, and it's looking great. And many well-known games from outside sources, like Godzilla, D2, Rayman, and Tetris--will greet American gamers. There's something high-quality (unlike for the PSX) to satisfy everyone, and there's a lot of it.By the time the Dreamcast finally arrives in America, positive hype will have been building for a year and a half, there will be loads of great games, it shouldn't be incredibly expensive (not for long at least), and all gamers will have access to lots of info about it. There will be little or no competition. The PSX2 and Nintendo 2000 are still far enough away so as not to hinder the DC's sales too much. Sega is re-instilling that trust that's been missing between it and its consumers, by showing they can turn out great products. Though the lack of competetion is a main reason why so many PSX games aren't very good in quality, the same won't happen for the DC. We can alwasy be confident Sega will have new, good games--it's obvoius the ones Sega creates are among the best. And they'll want to keep that level of excellence for the DC, so they'll make sure all their developers are keeping busy. Loads of well-known great games, much positive hype, low initial cost, high availability, much information--that's what's needed to sell a system, and that's exactly what the Dreamcast is doing.