Sega.Net - Gone

Just recently, Sega has shut down its seminal on-line service, Sega.Net. Despite such credible celebrity backers like Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit (note: sarcasm intended), Sega’s home for the console online community has now gone by the wayside. While this was pretty much expected due to the Dreamcasts slow demise in the US, it is pretty surprising on why it failed to make as much as it should.

It seems that in Sega’s generosity, they made a grave error. When getting a game, a gamer gets 50 free hours of Sega.Net on-line service. Well, if I had bought NFL2k1 and used up my 50 hours, then bought Quake 3: Arena, I would suddenly have 50 more free hours. Due to what could have been a confusing and costly method of tracking any and all gamers who used the service, Sega opted to go with the theory that gamers would pay for the service if they enjoyed it and to keep things fair, they would give all games 50 free hours instead of just the earlier titles that used the Dreamcast’s multiplayer capabilities. This turned out to be an unfortunate move.

Gamers did use this service.. and used it.. and used it.. and used it some more. With more than 250,000 gamers using Sega.Net, it is still unknown as to just how many of them actually paid for the service, instead of simply using hours they had compiled by buying more games. While to those of us on a PC whom are used to going to our favorite sites and playing our favored games daily, many don’t realize just how much 50 hours is. I still haven’t used all 50 hours from a title I bought a very long time ago, and if you had 3 or so games with all of these hours, then you’re looking at a service that is pretty much free to you.

Due to the low resolution, muddy text effects, and generally uncomfortable use of using a Dreamcast to visits sites, that portion of the system’s capabilities was never fully taken advantage of. When you have websites out of the picture that leaves only games. With a max of 3 hours of gaming a day (many played far less due to other restrictions), a single 50 hours would make actually paying for the service a bit foolish. All is not lost though, Sega has teamed up with EarthLink, a huge service that has been around for many years – and has also gotten its share of complaints. But who knows, maybe with the less demanding and time consuming console gamer, this service will bode better than Sega’s own. Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, it still isn’t too late to play games online. All you need is any ISP to play a Dreamcast game on-line, so if you have one now.. which I am assuming you do since you’re reading this, get on-line and give some games a go. You shouldn’t be disappointed.

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