MudMan

It didn't have a chance. Those are a lot of "ifs". You're basically saying if the other console manufacturers hadn't manufactured consoles then the Dreamcast would have done great.

Look, from a design perspective, the DC was ahead of its time: cram a PC in a console shell, focus on sharp resolutions and online support. The template ended up becoming the Xbox and eventually after the 360 era it's what all modern consoles are.

But in the context of them trying to bounce back from the Saturn's very mishandled Western run, it was the absolute wrong console to make. All the arguments from Sega fans about how the games looked nicer than the PS2 and whatnot just didn't hold up to scrutiny on the displays of the time. Was the resolution much higher? Yep. Did it matter when plugged in using component cables to a crummy consumer CRT? Absolutely not. It looked a whole generation behind.

And again, be careful about rating worldwide success from what happened in the US. The DC did surprisingly well there, like the N64 did, but much less elsewhere. The Gamecube outsold it 2:1, as did the original Xbox, and the PS2 ended up outselling both of those 10:1. The Dreamcast was in stores over here, for sure, but I have never met anybody who owned one.

And a handle. From that perspective it was a nice tiny lunchbox with a cool console attached to it.

We don't have Cap'n Crunch either. And I don't know what Rice-a-roni is. If Tropicana is juice we do get that. Pepsi drinks are a thing worldwide.

As for porridge, the only reason I've ever seen it is I know people with medical issues.

Interestingly, the GameCube ended up having all of those, so... more related than one would think, I guess?

It did cloud game streaming in 2012 and, unlike the Sony Portal, the Steam Link or Xbox Cloud, it actually worked.

Granted, while you were within spitting distance of the unit and had clear line of sight, but still. Impressively lagless wireless video out of a console in the early 2010s? We don't respect that enough.

Some of this is factually wrong, some of this I disagree with personally.

I'm not gonna stand here and claim the WiiU was a good business choice or the best possible design for what they were going for. That was the Switch, and... well, yeah, it's the biggest console out there for a reason.

I'll say for it that, like the GameCube, it's less of an interesting retro ownership piece just because so much of its library ended up getting Switch ports. Given the scarcity, some of the reliability issues and the rarity of some games, though, you can be sure I'm sitting on my Wii U and physical games indefinitely. I'm not a speculative collector, but that Wii U copy of The Wonderful 101 is gonna be a good investment at some point.

I'm not a fan of the Dreamcast library at all. If you ask me, that'd be the Saturn, which has more interesting games by a wide margin, IMO. If anything, I feel the DC has been mythologized unfairly. It has good ports of a bunch of great ports of fighting games from the worst period for fighting games and a few 3D arcade ports from the worst period for 3D arcade games.

Okay, here's my obligatory reminder that it's less of a flop than people, particularly in anglo territories, give it credit for. It sold just shy of the original Xbox and it outsold well liked stuff like the Dreamcast or the Vita about 2 to 1.

A few consoles at that time were very regional. The N64 was a rare sight where I'm from, I have seen an original Xbox in the wild exactly once, it was being used as a DVD player and the owner had no games for it. The Gamecube picked up a lot of steam over here once the price went down to 100 bucks and it got a reputation for having some of the best excluisves of that generation later in its lifespan.

The one thing I'd argue about its longevity as a retro console is that it's almost entirely superseded by the Wii, which can play the entire library natively, has more functional output options and is super easy to find. The Cube is cuter, more iconic and built like a brick, though, so it's a better thing to have on a shelf.

The problems have to do with people not liking Meta. I'm getting an increasingly strong feeling that the goalposts shall be placed wherever they are needed.

Which I suppose explains the tonal whiplash of going from people raging that not enough people were defederating from Meta to raging that Meta is defederating from the usual suspects in less time than it took to get through the Christmas leftovers.

Not that I particularly like Meta. All social media was a mistake, if you ask me. But still.

I think you're misunderstanding what sorts of roles a brand, sales, PR and community management teams actually have, beyond... I'm guessing you're thinking traditional advertising stuff. But also what sort of role they would have under Valve's extremely opaque strategy.

At the absolute least Valve has a ton of third party relations to handle, which I know for a fact they do because I've physically seen the people doing it. So there's that.

They also run one of the biggest esports organizations in the business, or at least they manage it, which is effectively its own standalone thing on the side. They fully run The International, as far as I can tell, and they at the very least fund and organize the CS majors circuit.

They run one of the world's biggest digital service platforms, with an absolutely insane amount of third parties involved worldwide. They have comarketing deals all over the place. Every time you see a game show up on a Steam banner somebody had to have a conversation about that, sign deals, source art, get it cleared... it's a whole mess.

They run everry bit of branding, marketing and community management on Steam. Every sale, every ad, every bit of written copy you see on Steam that is not uploaded directly by a game maker? Somebody made those.

They ship and sell games and hardware. All those Steam Deck OLED reviews and previews you saw? Somebody went and set those up, signed NDAs and embargos, shipped test units, provided review guides, handled questions from the press, got the right info to the right places.

Every campaign, loot box, piece of cosmetics, seasonal event in CS2 or DOTA 2 or any other Valve game? Somebody put those together. Not just the content, the in-store materials, copy, go-to-market plan, the whole deal.

Valve are intentionally obtuse about what they do. They don't put roles next to names on credits. They don't put in credits at all, sometimes. They don't advertise job positions or share what the jobs actually are. They don't easily provide points of contact or names or have roles or tell anybody what they do or how, with very few exceptions. Because it helps their image. It helps sell that one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world (we're talking Netflix big. Amazon big) is somehow an upstart of engineers coming up with ideas on the spot. And that is what we call "a carefully cultivated image".

I absolutely believe that they run lean and flexible. I have no question. But I'd be less suprised to find out that Valve has no cleaning staff than to find they have nobody working on brand, comms or event organization.

Hey! Somebody brought up the "leaked" employee manual, I think I have bingo now.

The guys they have doing dev relations aren't talking development, they're talking business.

And just so I'm clear on how you think this works. You believe that Valve sets up what? Five sales a year? Plus the International. Plus coordinating and financing the CS Majors. Plus actually negotiating all the distribution deals for store placement with third parties. Plus shipping multiple hardware and software products, including setting up preview events and sending out review samples. Plus all the press relations for both games and press queries...

...with zero sales/PR/community management staff.

Am I getting that wrong?

Man, messed up as it is to refuse to put proper credits in games, you certainly see how that feeds into their, again, very carefully curated public image.

EDIT: To be clear, it's hard to know what anybody does at Valve if you don't work at Valve, or at least routinely with Valve. I'm not gonna stand here and say that all of the guys working on that don't also... I don't know go build 3D models or code store features when they're not doing that. But they absolutely do that. And they absolutely have a PR strategy, which is mostly "shut the hell up, keep the black box a black box". Again, so much to learn from them about how to handle PR, especially in tech and gaming.