It seems like only yesterday when the Dreamcast launched and had quite a bit of a following when it came out. My very first video game console ever was a Sega Genesis, with Sonic 2 being the first real game I every played that I still have very fond memories of till this day. It's still a fantastic game too.
Hardcore Dreamcast and Saturn fans might disagree with me, but I've always felt that out of all the Sega consoles the Genesis had the best games. It had Sonic 1-3, Phantasy Star II-IV, Gunstar Heroes, Streets of Rage 1-3, and many more classics some even still till this day the best in their respective genres.
In parallel, Sony has been in the console business for 20 years, with no signs of stopping or going out of business anytime soon. People always blame Sony's tactics for putting Sega down like it did, which is true but at the same time Sega's management of it's hardware AND software was absolutely horrid. Even in the Genesis era you had stuff like Sega CD and 32x released so shortly between each other yet had barely any support and a ton of garbage games that went along with it.
To only think if Sega's management was as good as Sony's, Microsoft's, or even Nintendo's that they could still be in the hardware market today. I mean, why couldn't have Sega had a strong cult following for it's hardware similar to Nintendo does to this day? I could easily see a place for that in the market.
Sega was always an innovator ever since the 80's in the arcades, but never truly made a breakout hit with a lot of their innovations. Could you imagine if Sega retooled some of their motion controls in the fishing game that used them before Nintendo even thinks of the Wii, capitalizing on that market that finds something like motion controls to be "cool"? How about online features as good as Xbox Live was before Xbox Live was even created? All of these things Sega were capable of doing, but never did it because of bad management all around. Sega had all the potential to pioneer things but it never fell through cause by 2001, the company was long gone as a hardware developer.
In 20 years Sega's console market will sadly probably will be remembered the same was Hudson Soft/NEC's console market was remembered: A relic of the 90's that ended up short and failing. Regardless, I personally will never forget the time where Sega's name was near household status and you couldn't convince your friend that the Super Nintendo was better than the Genesis for nothing.
RIP Sega's console hardware. You will be missed.