They lost money on the hardware and didn’t make it back on software, so you’re likely right.

Yeah my friend got a Dreamcast and then I pirated all the games for him. It was one of the most awesome consoles ever with amazing games. But the few other people I knew with one at the time also pirated games. It was just so easy because it didn’t even need a modchip or anything. Just download, burn a CD, and play.

A vast majority of the public didn’t do this or know how to do this.

It failed because the PS2 was dominating at the time, and Sega didn’t know how to launch a console, even if they had a gun pointed at their head.

I was in college at the time and there were a few of us with Dreamcasts. I bought my games (and still have them), but there were guys with literally every single game in the library burned to disc.