Dreamcast also had fairly poor 3rd party support aside from Namco as I recall. I agree they could have made hay in the West, but that was an uphill battle without EA and I think Activision really bringing anything to the table.
In hindsight they should have done a twin stick controller too. I liked their controller, but the Xbox controller was that that should have been.
One thing that I (seemingly incorrectly) kind of disliked about Ascend was that if was so focused on kind of being an e-sport. My favorite part of the original were the havoc and ultra renegades mods and bringing it heavy weaponry to try and crash through the other guys base before they could do us. The new games feel like you just see the lights zipping through at 300kph and my reflexes can’t keep up with that anymore.