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How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

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Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#81

Post by markkanof »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #65
yardie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it played as big a role as people tend to remember. There were a lot of forces in play that contributed to its demise. The biggest one being the PS2. Even though the Dreamcast had similar or better specs than the PS2 it wasn’t considered a real 3D platform by a lot of the game magazine critics. It was released on time unlike the PS2 and XBox so they were comparing shipping hardware to fancy, not factual…

> Even though the Dreamcast had similar or better specs than the PS2 it wasn’t considered a real 3D platform by a lot of the game magazine critics. Wat? That sounds like you confused the Saturn and DC. The Saturn had iffy hardware choices for 3D (because nobody saw the PlayStation coming), but the DC was a 3D system through and through. I don't recall anyone at the time claiming otherwise.

Your right about the aspects of the Dreamcast being a legit 3D console. I do remember at the time though a lot of people bying into Sony marketing regarding their “emotion engine” chip that would render 75 gagillion whats its a second and would be the most astonishing thing you have ever saw. Once the system was released it was pretty underwhelming from a visual perspective, but that didn’t stop many people from arguing with me about how graphically superior it was.

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#82

Post by jerf »

new299 wrote: post #20

There are two points to note. The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good). The article mentions Ikaruga a lot. It worth noting that Ikaruga for the Dreamcast was released a year after the Dreamcast was cancelled. They probably…

"The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good)."

If memory serves me... and it doesn't always terribly well, but still... I think you can make the even stronger argument that by the time the piracy was widespread and convenient, the console had already visibly failed. It took a while to get to the point where you could torrent an arbitrary game, burn it, and play it. You can tell that a console is going to fail to another before the last game is shipped. The PS2 was clearly going to crush the Dreamcast before it had literally passed it in numbers. I don't think the Dreamcast's fate would have materially changed if it was pirate-proof.

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#83

Post by naraic0o »

tangue wrote: post #35
atVelocet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it really was. Sega and Microsoft worked closely together or why do you think they implented the Windows CE option? Also all Sega arcades afterwards shipped with Xbox hardware.

Windows CE was loaded from the disks and was an option for developers. The dreamcast had another os which were more close to the naomi arcade machine

The article claims that the hardware contained no "OS" and that all discs were self-contained full-linked OSes.

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#84

Post by andrewmackrodt »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #56

I was heavily into burning DC ROMs back in the day. Its most valuable utility was making backups of the games we owned, as our first copy of Sonic Adventure 2 became scratched and nearly unreadable after awhile. The backups allowed me to keep our "critical" games like Soul Calibur, MvC2, and Power Stone 2 (that one cost a pretty penny) in their cases while we used the backups. It also allowed a handful of custom soun…

I found the complete GDI set quite easy to find, I believe it's available via torrent from archive.org

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#85

Post by chairmanmow »

Ntrails wrote: post #14
jsiepkes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the hack had a really low entry barrier. As in; no hardware modifications needed. You could just download an ISO from the net and you were good to go with your unmodified Dreamcast. In contrast the other consoles in that era Xbox, PlayStation, etc. all needed hardware modifications in order to run copied content.

But, and maybe I'm mis-remembering, how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO? Thinking back to when the dreamcast was a big console - I don't feel like it was common enough to really make a dent in dreamcast owners? Also, and again only from vague memory, wasn't the dreamcast itself underselling drastically. If it was game sales that broke the manufacturer then mayb…

I don't know if you're entirely misremembering, I had a Dreamcast around this time and I wasted a ton of time trying to pirate games - I'd set them to download and wait a few days to get the image. Then I'd have to use my buddies PC to burn (I had a Mac and you needed to use Nero or disk juggler on PC to burn them), write that in a special format and then hope the dreamcast would play it. Touching the computer while it was burning back then was a no-no too. I must've downloaded at least 20 games, but I think I only ever got one to work (Crazy Taxi), but I made plenty of coasters. The dreamcast taught me a lesson about the value of my time as I probably should have just bought the games. I saw Crazy Taxi for free in the Xbox store so I downloaded it the other day to kind of give me some perspective on how times have changed, it downloaded in under 10 minutes and was running. Back in dreamcast days, that was like a 10 day project.

I certainly don't think piracy killed the Dreamcast, it was a lot of built up 'bad will' by Sega and lousy execution. Third parties didn't want to develop for Sega, because Sega was flaky. I remember I had the broadband adapter for the Dreamcast, but it was only supported by one game(Quake). If I wanted to play NBA2K or NFL2K online I'd have to physically remove the ethernet adapter and plugin the dialup modem. Those games would have been great over ethernet, but as it was dialup online play had its share of frustrations. I had a Genesis, a Saturn, Master System and Game Gear before the Dreamcast but I think if Sega came out with another system after Dreamcast I may have had to bolt the company, they were the epitome of 'overpromising and underdelivering,' piracy gave them an excuse to focus in on the things they were better at (not selling consoles).

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#86

Post by RyanShook »

Crazy that the entire OS used by the game was loaded from the disc. Also interesting that the backdoor needed to make pirate copies viable was built-in and known from the beginning. Seems like vulnerabilities usually come from the edge use cases that sound like features but are actually attack vectors.

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#87

Post by at-fates-hands »

new299 wrote: post #20

There are two points to note. The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast. They didn’t sell many of the consoles... if it was a piracy issue then you’d expect they’d sell many consoles, but few games (the line up of games was really good). The article mentions Ikaruga a lot. It worth noting that Ikaruga for the Dreamcast was released a year after the Dreamcast was cancelled. They probably…

> The first is piracy probably didn’t lead to the failure of the Dreamcast.

I had a large group of friends who got the Dreamcast right when it came out. I still remember many of the commercials touting the AI of the console and the end of their commercials showing the light on the op of the console glowing with the voice over "it's thinking".

Everybody in our group wanted it because the Dreamcast touted the ability of the machine to think and gone were the days on NFL games were you could run one play over and over and the game would just let you. Here was a console who advertised this wasn't going to happen, that it was actively learning.

Huge disappointment when we all realized we had been had by a marketing campaign that touted a functionality the games and console could never have. After the first month and realizing all the AI claims were totally bogus, my whole group of friends didn't buy another game.

Once the PS2 came out, that was it for Dreamcast.

The interesting thing is I've seen a ton of articles about the history of the Dreamcast lately and none of them mention this very large marketing campaign of essentially lying about the capabilities of the console.

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#88

Post by DCKing »

pmarin wrote: post #49
wolfgke wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, I've always seen the original Xbox as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast. In what sense? The architecture between these two consoles is IMHO quite different.

Sega started porting many of their new arcade games to the Xbox. Consequently former Dreamcast users who wanted to play the new arcade games at home bought the Xbox.

A Sega exec tried to push Microsoft to make the Xbox backwards compatible with the Dreamcast even [1], which Microsoft refused mostly because they didn't want to support online infrastructure for titles that used it. The original Xbox seemed to have been considered to be the favored successor to the Dreamcast by Sega at least at one point.

Then again, Sega's main initial portwork was focused on the GameCube. The Dreamcast games Sonic Adventure 2, Ikaruga, Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star Online and Skies of Arcadia were ported to the GameCube and not to the Xbox. They also brought originally-for-Dreamcast titles Super Monkey Ball, Beach Spikers and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg to the GameCube exclusively.

[1]: https://kotaku.com/how-xbox-could-have-helped-the-dreamcast-...

Re: How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated

#90

Post by sergiotapia »

Keyframe wrote: post #28
londons_explore wrote: post #9

Did the breaking of the copy protection on the Dreamcast really play a big part in Sega's downfall? If so, it would be one of the only cases I know of where IP piracy led to financial ruin of the content creator.

One could argue that (easy) piracy resulted in original Playstation's success.

I still remember buying games for 10Bs. ($2 back then) in Bolivia back in the day.
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