Sega of America announced Wednesday that it is dropping the price of its discontinued Dreamcast video game console to $49.95 -- around the price of a single game for consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Sega decided to exit the hardware business early in 2001 amid a cash crunch that left it unable to continue subsidizing the cost of manufacturing its consoles.
The company has refocused on game software, producing titles for Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube.
Sega had already twice trimmed the price of the Dreamcast system, which originally sold for $149.
Sega spokeswoman Gwen Marker said the company expects to have all the remaining 270,000 Dreamcast consoles in stores this weekend. "At our present sales rates, that means retailers will run out around mid-December," she said.
The Dreamcast has a software catalog of about 200 games, although only a handful of new titles are planned for the console.
Sega decided to exit the hardware business early in 2001 amid a cash crunch that left it unable to continue subsidizing the cost of manufacturing its consoles.
The company has refocused on game software, producing titles for Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube.
Sega had already twice trimmed the price of the Dreamcast system, which originally sold for $149.
Sega spokeswoman Gwen Marker said the company expects to have all the remaining 270,000 Dreamcast consoles in stores this weekend. "At our present sales rates, that means retailers will run out around mid-December," she said.
The Dreamcast has a software catalog of about 200 games, although only a handful of new titles are planned for the console.
