EA Sports prez Peter Moore talks Dreamcast's last day

I love (EA Sports' president) Peter Moore, I admit it. Well, I admire anyone that speaks openly and honestly, especially within the context of an industry, where speaking openly and honestly means less money (tut tut!), or so some believe. Personally, I like to think consumers everywhere prefer to have an open relationship with the businesses, companies and corporations they support, and this, in the long run, leaves everyone with a much better situation. So that's why I love Peter Moore, because he speaks openly. Case in point this time is his recent interview with the Guardian, where he goes into detail about the death of the Dreamcast (well, pseudo-death, an avid community kind of reanimated it following Sega's withdrawal from the console thing). Sure, it's about six years later, but it's still relevant in its own way. Here's the first bit:

"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… and so the North American launch was the last best chance – Europe was going to be launching but there wasn't enough there to salvage what was going to be a tough situation with the PS2 looming 12 months out … The US was the last best chance of getting the Dreamcast up and running.

We amassed a very strong line up of titles, but unfortunately, EA - God bless 'em – decided they weren't going to publish on Dreamcast. That forced me to build my own sports brand, called 2K – we came up with the name one night, because it was the Y2K period, we needed to get the packaging done and we couldn't come up with a name. So we just said, 'let's call it 2K sports'. It was the best we could come up with.

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…"

So it seems, the timing of everything just left Sega in a tricky position, where everything could've went one way or the other. Rather than risk it, Moore had to do what most businessmen probably would've: he made the call, and ended the ol' DC.

"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.

We were selling 50,000 units a day, then 60,000, then 100,000, but it was just not going to be enough to get the critical mass to take on the launch of PS2. It was a big stakes game. Sega had the option of pouring in more money and going bankrupt and they decided they wanted to live to fight another day. So we licked our wounds, ate some humble pie and went to Sony and Nintendo to ask for dev kits."

But like with an ex-girlfriend (boyfriend?), Moore can still be happy about the good times:

"You know, I loved the console wars and still do even though I'm no longer in the console business… the idea of being upfront, getting after Phil Harrison, getting after Kaz Hirai and then later getting after John Riccitiello… I think the consumer loves it, it adds publicity and it adds fire around the industry. And in those days we needed to because we didn't have the money …

In the end it didn't work out. It was tough, but those were great days and I've never met anybody who regretted buying a Dreamcast. Soul Calibur anyone? We had a lot of content, a lot of fun and we had tremendous PR, and we got after it in a unique way – the 'Its thinking' campaign was a great campaign, we had these wacky 15-second spots on MTV, we launched on 9.9.99 at the MTV Music Awards, we hit the road with Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit of all people; the Family Values and Anger Management tours – we were a big brand."

To be sure, I'd like to give Moore a hug, and a few hundred million dollars to make a new console. Also like an ex-girlfriend and/or boyfriend, I'm betting they've learned plenty about how to avoid the pitfalls of the console wars from the DC, and could make it next time if there ever were such an opportunity. If the day ever comes, I'll be a giddy fanboy waving a Sega flag, singing the gamer's anthem.