Of course it had a great launch. But...
"...would've been fine if it had copy protection..." - Piracy had a negligible impact on sales compared to the bigger issues.
Those issues are:
1. The PS2. If I were to make a pie chart, this would take up 80% of it. The PS2 was more powerful, had more hype, and most importantly, had a DVD player. The PS2 killed Sega as a console creator, period.
2. Internal issues. There was a huge rivalry between the US and Japanese units of Sega with open mutiny taking place on a regular basis. This led to all sorts of bad decisions.
3. Library. Yes, the 2K games were awesome, but the DC didn't have EA's sports games, it didn't have much of the "mature" content that the PS2 had, etc.
4. Marketing. Again, it ties back to the PS2, which was marketed as this badass machine that Sadam was hoarding so he could calculate ballistic trajectories. Sega was... Sega.
I'm obviously leaving out a million other things, but these are the main issues that killed the Dreamcast, NOT piracy.
"...Sega...killed it off prematurely..."
Prematurely?? The had NO money left. You're implying they cut their losses and threw the baby out with the bath water. No way. It was either maintain the Dreamcast for another 6 months or a year and go out of business, or kill it off and maybe not go out of business.
By "would've been fine" I think you're also arguing that the DC could have held its own against the PS2, the Xbox AND the GC. There was zero chance of that given the capabilities of the DC and the *relative* lack of support. Yes, Capcom put their full force behind the Dreamcast. But they were never going to put Devil May Cry on the Dreamcast. Square-Enix wasn't going to publish anything. Konami didn't put out anything worth mentioning and they certainly weren't going to put out an enhanced Metal Gear Solid or MGS 2 or Silent Hill 2 on the DC. It didn't have GTA 3 - one of the biggest system sellers of the generation.
Dreamcast is my favorite console of that generation. But given what the mainstream market wanted, there was no way it could've survived against the PS2, let alone the all three of its competitors.
