SEGA Licenses High-End PowerVR Graphics Technology for Advanced Arcade Systems
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?ID=194
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?ID=194
SEGA, the leader in the arcade market, will use a new high-performance PowerVR graphics processor as the basis of its future arcade systems.
DaveBaumann said:Read the news post!
If it is ready how similar will be to a posible PC part?
Sega Considers Atomiswave Development
By David Smith
2/6/2004
Surprising almost exactly nobody, Sega is seriously considering development for Sammy's Atomiswave arcade hardware, Sega president Hisao Oguchi said in a recent interview with the Nikkei Industrial Daily. A move in that direction has long been expected, ever since Sammy became a majority shareholder in Sega last fall.
The Atomiswave arcade board, launched by Sammy in earnest last year, is a modified version of Sega's own Dreamcast-based Naomi hardware. The Atomiswave lacks the Naomi's optional GD-ROM drive, instead storing all its games on cartridges, but Sammy has upgraded the hardware with support for a record-keeping system using magnetic player data cards, called AW-NET.
Sammy is aggressively seeking support for the Atomiswave, but so far it's found little from talented developers. Early Atomiswave games like Dolphin Blue and Demolish Fist have so far failed to light arcades on fire, although Arc System Works' new fighter Guilty Gear Isuka is expected to do much better.
With Sammy looking for experience Atomiswave developers and also looking for Sega to focus more development effort in Japanese arcades (which have proven a surprisingly strong source of earnings over the past year), it looks as if those two goals may dovetail over the coming year.
Sega Talks DS, PSP Development
By David Smith
2/6/2004
While THQ confirmed yesterday that it has received neither development hardware nor software for Nintendo's upcoming DS handheld, apparently Sega has not been similarly ignored. In an interview with the Nikkei Industrial Daily, Sega president Hisao Oguchi today confirmed that Sega has received "development tools" for producing DS games, although he did not specify whether said tools consisted of software, hardware, or both.
Sega has yet to officially confirm development of DS titles, but it sounds as if it's at least seriously considering the prospect.
Oguchi also commented on Sega's posture towards Sony's PSP handheld, which is due for worldwide release at around the same time as the DS, late in 2004. Sega is "ready to offer software" for the PSP, he said, putting Sega in the same boat as nearly every other major publisher quizzed on the subject.
Sega-AM2 Plans New Arcade Titles?
By David Smith
1/27/2004
Sega's AM2 division seems possessed of one of the games industry's rare senses of humor. In its regular Weekly-AM2 online column, the studio today announced plans to display...well, depending on how you look at it, at least three titles at the upcoming AOU 2004 arcade show in Japan.
The pertinent bit of the column goes something like this: "Right now, we're busy preparing for AOU. Please expect to see titles like *** and *****, ***, and so on."
Sega has yet to officially announce *** or *****, but then we have a sneaking suspicion that those may not be the proper names of the games in question. One of them may be Quest of D, the networked dungeon-crawling adventure shown at Sega's private arcade exhibition last November, but we'll have to wait until AOU next month to know for sure.
AOU 2004 is scheduled to take place in Tokyo February 20-21, so look forward to another round of arcade news when the show rolls by.
Sammy, Sega Plan Overseas Expansion
By David Smith
1/26/2004
Japanese pachinko giant Sammy has formed a comprehensive business tie-up with American gaming company International Game Technology, Bloomberg News reports today, passing on the news from the Sankei Shimbun. IGT, the world's largest manufacturer of slot machines, will assist Sammy with its plans for overseas expansion while benefiting from Sammy's more diverse base of games and properties, not to mention its complete access to the Japanese gambling market.
Sega, in which Sammy now owns a 22.4% stake, will benefit from the deal by gaining new avenues of distribution for some of its games. IGT will become the OEM supplier of Sega's networked horse-racing games (of which Derby Owner's Club is the latest example) overseas.
Looking at the larger picture, Sammy plans to use this alliance to expand into many foreign arcade markets, including South America, China, and Europe as well as the United States, with its own low-priced Atomiswave arcade hardware and new networked games from Sega. Sammy's ultimate goal is to achieve combined sales (Sammy and Sega together) of 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) two years from now, compared to 362.9 billion yen ($3.4 billion) in 2003.
CPU - Handles 3D Transformation
Hitachi UH1 (Ultra Hitachi 1)
Clock Speed: 800mhz
L1 cache size: 512k
Floating Point Performance: 16 GFLOPS max
Integer Performance: 1500 MIPS
Bus size: 256 bits
Bus bandwidth: 8.4 Gigabytes/second
Transistors: 120 million
Manufacture: .13 micron
Able to calculate 100 million polygons/second
Co-processor - Handles Artificial Intelligence/Artificial Life, Collision Detection & MPEG2&3 Decoding
NEC 8600
Clock Speed: 200mhz
Floating Point Performance: 1.8 GFLOPS max
Integer Performance: 400 MIPS
Bus size: 64 bits
Bus bandwidth: 1.2 Gigabytes/second
Transistors: 26 million
Manufacture: .18 micron
Graphics Processor
PowerVR chip code named "Excelsior"
Clock Speed: 300mhz
Bus size: 256 bits
Fill Rate: 8.4 full featured billion pixels/second (deferred rendered)
Max resolution: 1920x1200 @ 32bit color
Max texture resolution: 4096x4096
Max color: 48bit RGBA
Effects:
* Perspective correct true-color Gouraud lighting
* Perspective correct transparency
* Perspective correct texture mapping
* Trilinear and anisotropic filtering
* Depth buffering
* Full Scene Anti-aliasing
* Fog and depth cue with vertex level control
* Scissor and stipple masking
* Full alpha blending modes supported
* Specular highlights
* 48-bit floating-point Z buffering
* Environment mapping
* 32 Overlay planes
* 8x8 Anti-aliasing multisampling
* Volumetric effects
* Hardware translucency sorter
* 256 layers of translucency
* True Bumpmapping
* True Phong shading and lighting
* True Raytracing
* 100 million textured, gourad shaded, lighted
polygons/second
* 60 Million polygons/second with ALL effects enabled
Sound processor
Clock Speed: 100mhz
Voices: 256
* Vortex2 technology
Other Information
* 64MB of main RDRAM, 32MB of RDRAM for textures
* DVD-ROM media format
* Backward compatible to Dreamcast due to emulation
Reverend said:Er... I made a post... what happened?
Says Hiroshi Yagi, Corporate Officer in AM Product R&D Division, SEGA CORPORATION: “The inherent benefits of PowerVR, which are well known to SEGA, will be utilized to deliver interactive experiences that will amaze gamers worldwide and continue SEGA’s legacy of innovation and excellence. SEGA’s new arcade platform, which will be at the forefront of Sega’s current board strategy across all video game genres, will deliver cutting edge gaming, exceeding any other videogame system in the world.â€
Says John Metcalfe, VP Business Development, Imagination Technologies: “We are thrilled to once again be cooperating with SEGA at the forefront of video gaming. Together we have already proven our excellence in arcade games with the Naomi family, and it is safe to say that once again gamers will be looking eagerly to the arcades to see where the future of video gaming lies.â€