It has been claimed that many different things were responsible for the ultimate demise of the Sega Dreamcast, ranging from the complexity of developing software for the Windows CE based console to just plain bad sales figures.  But in an recent interview with The Guardian the head of EA Sports, ex-Reebok, Microsoft and Sega man Peter Moore, set the record straight…  He was the man that had to make the final call, he was the man that killed the Dreamcast…

“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 hundreds of millions of dollars by the holiday season and shift millions of units of hardware, otherwise we just couldn’t sustain the business.”

“Somehow I got to make that call, not the Japanese,” Moore revealed. 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.”

“It was tough,” said Moore, “but those were great days and I’ve never met anybody who regretted buying a Dreamcast.”

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