First of all, never believe anything you read in any videogame magazines
without some kind of confirmation (and other videogame magazines don't
count!). Most of the times, the people who write for these things:
1) Don't know what they are talking about and are just repeating specs they
THINK they heard. For example, multiple game magazines referred to the N64
as having a revolutionary rendering technique called MIT-mapping. It was
supposed to be MIP-mapping and it is a standard technique that has been
around for over a decade but somewhere it was misspelled and then every
magazine misspelled it after that (because the writers had no clue what it
was). They thought it was some new technology (invented by M.I.T.
perhaps?) and ran with it like so many media whores. The myth that was
"SGI graphics" is another one of these.
2) Repeat stuff they heard on the Internet and call it news. It was funny
watching magazines making up stuff about the internals of 3DO and the M2
when working there, because I knew they were wrong and had to wonder how
they came up with such bogus information. It made me wonder how much stuff
they got wrong about other companies.
3) When they don't know the answer to the reader's question, they will
make something up rather than say they don't know. My favorite example of
this was when a reader asked (I think it was in GameFan magazine) how Super
Metroid could be a 24Mbit cart when the SNES was a 16-bit system. The
"answer" the editor gave was "Well 16-bit systems can only address 16Mbit
of memory at a time but you can use bank-switching to address 24 Mbit or
more." If the editor had taken a basic computer course in High School, he
should have known the correct answer.
I'll admit magazines have gotten better over the past few years in terms of
technical info (probably due to getting swamped with email when they make
mistakes), but I still don't think they are quite as "connected" to the
inside of the industry as they claim to be. Experience has shown me
otherwise.
>
> I found most of an old game club newsletter that also contained the
> specs. However, part of these pages were aparently drowned in coffee a
> while back, and are difficult to read.
>
Since these didn't come from 3DO or Panasonic, what makes you think they
are accurate?
>
> CPU speed : 88 Mhz
> 1.4 Million Polygons Per second
>
Okay. The original 3DO specs were for a 66 Mhz PPC 602, the final M2 specs
were for two 66Mhz 602s. I don't know if Motorola/IBM ever made a faster
602.
>
> Memory : 16 Megs SDRAM. Plus internal NV RAM & Removable External Cards
> for game data.
>
The original 3DO specs were for 4MB of RAM, the final Panasonic specs were
for 8MB of SDRAM. The system could take up to 128MB RAM but that was never
going into a consumer unit (they were going up against a $150 N64,
remember?). Developer units had two times the final RAM (so that games can
be developed freely and then scaled back to the RAM footprint more
easily). So a final M2 developer unit would have had 16 MB of RAM but not
a consumer unit.
>
> Graphic : 640x480 resolution. Supports
> MPEG-1 & JPEG decompression.
>
> Sound: 66 Mhz DsP 32 channel.
> Supports MPEG audio
>
> Graphic Effects:
> Texture mapping
> MIP mapping at multiple levels.
> 3D Perspective Correction.
> Alpha Special Effects
> Multi level MIP Mapping
> Gourad Shading
> Other data is here, but it's really illegible.
>
These have never changed.
>
> DVD Rom Drive
> (editors note says : DVD Rom Drive proposed.
> Probably will not make final unit)
Not in the original consumer unit. Panasonic added this for the business
unit.
>
> Thats about all thats legible. Along with a list of about 10 games that
> were coming to the machine.
>
> 2 titles from Capcom (all I can read of that is (CAPCOM) at the end of
> it.)
> D2
> Madden
> Iron & Blood
> Clayfighter
> Rocket Sled (?? best I can make out)
>
> Sorry, but thats all I have at the moment. My Next Gens must be in
> storage. I rarely through a game mag away, even a bad one. Or in the
> case of this newsletter, a REALLY messed up one
>
The M2 did end up in two arcade machines by Konami. Fly Polystars (sort of
like Panzer Dragoon) and Battle Tryst (a fighting game).
>
> Certainly from what I've read though, the present M2 is watered down
> from what it was (or at least what it was touted to be).
>
Not at all. If anything the added the DVD-ROM (which wouldn't have been
available for the original M2 game console launch).
>
> Frankly though, I thought the processor was even faster (100 mhz+).
> Perhaps I need a memory upgrade. ha!
>
Yep. Maybe you saw 2x 66Mhz and turned that into 132Mhz?
>
> I'd still rather have seen the original M2 make the scene as a game
> machine.
Me too. BTW, the M2 didn't launch because it was too expensive. It was
very competitive price wise (the thing was made up of three chips plus RAM
plus glue so it wasn't expensive at all) but Panasonic got cold feet. They
believed Nintendo was going to dominate the market and they thought
bringing out a unit that was twice as powerful as the N64 (and a lot easier
to develop for) wasn't good enough. They didn't anticipate that cartridges
were going to really stunt the N64's growth. In hindsight, I can safely
say the M2 would have buried the N64 if Panasonic actually launched it.
The reasons are pretty simple. The dev system was dirt cheap and easy to
use (Sony released the Net Yarouze because it got some early info on the
M2's dev system which was essentially an M2 unit with an extra ROM and a
parallel port cable for the PC). A developer familiar with an API like
Glide would be right at home so ports of 3DFX games would be easy. The OS
made streaming a dream. Today I have trouble getting Windoze with a
PII-450 and a TNT card to do what I could on an M2 four years ago. Every
developer that used the final M2 system preferred it to any other console
for ease of development. Unfortunately, everything in the universe (or so
it seemed) conspired to keep the unit off the shelf. The main causes were:
1. Panasonic was overly worried about Nintendo. They couldn't see that
cartridges were going to doom that system to being a (relative) niche
market.
2. Trip Hawkins had a mid-life crisis and wanted to get out of the console
hardware business. He wanted to go back to what he believes he knows best-
games. Of course looking at some of the stinkers coming out of Studio (New
World and Cyclone excluded) you have to wonder. He basically told
Panasonic they would have to pay for any help with M2 (in addition to the
$100 million). Trip wouldn't be evangelizing the system anymore and 3DO
could theoretically nickel-and-dime Panasonic to death. After all, the
braintrust for the M2 was still at 3DO (before being amputated into
Cagent). Panasonic would have to put their faith in something they didn't
invent nor knew all that much about. For all they knew, there could have
been a fatal flaw in the system that wouldn't reveal itself until after
they spent a billion dollars on a launch.
3. The guy who was head of the Interactive Media division of Panasonic
(actually MEI) was retiring shortly after the time M2 was originally to
have launched. Only he could authorize the money (500 million to a billion
dollars) needed to launch the unit. He didn't want to commit his company
to such an expensive venture and then leave. So he didn't do it. His
successor inherited M2 and was reluctant to commit to it since it wasn't
"his baby". He was interested in MX but apparently he couldn't work out a
deal with Cagent (the M2 hardware group) for it. This was probably due to
an arrogant individual at Cagent who shall remain nameless who said "I
don't like MEI's table manners, so I don't want to deal with them." I
swear to God that I'm not making the last sentence up!
These are, I feel, the main reasons we never saw the M2. Scary isn't it?
It wasn't technology or costs or the market. It was key individuals that
deprived the world of a great game console. We often hear how an
individual can have a profound impact for good on the rest of the world (or
at least a large chunk of it). If it weren't for John Carmack, game
developers be doomed to using an inferior version of Direct3D for game
development instead of having a choice (Thanks, John!). Unfortunately, an
individual can bring an equally negative effect on the world. An
individual can undo the work of thousands of man-years with the stroke of
pen. Remember that when you work on a project. Don't let a few
individuals (if you can) undo what you and your fellow workers have slaved
months and years for.
Don't even get me started on how the M2/Sega deal fell through.
