Are there any postmortems on the Dreamcast and why it failed? I'm genuinely curious. I don't know if the openness of the Dreamcast led to its downfall, but it has a fairly strong community of hackers using it currently.
The best I can muster. Being a fan at the time, I tend to follow the "it needed more third party support" and "Sony lied/"used false PR" (which seems oddly more acceptable) to hype the PS2 into unrealistic levels" lines of thought. Particularly the latter, claiming video as "gameplay."
You really get the sense that success in that business (at least at that time, in the minds of the executives they interviewed) is about everything except delivering the best possible value to the customer.
It truly makes me wonder sometimes about the person on the other end of the keyboard when this kind of personal data breach is written off completely, laughed at as no big thing. I mean, I don't even have a PS3 or PSN account (waiting for Team Ico's next game,) but I can tell it isn't "nothing."
Really want to be disappointed in gamers? Google Image search "Modern Warfare 2 boycott".