Do you think Sega should re-enter the handheld race?
- Thread starter SegaR&D
- Start date
Let's think about it for a moment. SEGA itself has reported a profit for the past two years. The home division or console games side is starting to turn around. That is what's important. This should be the first year in a long time that SEGA makes a profit from console games, albeit very small profit, if any. Now you want to release a new handheld and set back all the progress SEGA ahs made turning itself around? Why would anyone want SEGA as a whole to report losses again?
The simple answer is no. There is too much competition and SEGA can easily cash in by making games for both PSP and DS/GBA.
The simple answer is no. There is too much competition and SEGA can easily cash in by making games for both PSP and DS/GBA.
But the SH3707 is there
Ready for somebody to license and be used, such amazing technology for such cost effective price.
It's very tempting. I dont think Sega are the type to let this opportunity go without a thought. I mean do you really think that it hasn't been brought up at a meeting or two at their Japanese HQ?
Most probably it has.
Ready for somebody to license and be used, such amazing technology for such cost effective price.
It's very tempting. I dont think Sega are the type to let this opportunity go without a thought. I mean do you really think that it hasn't been brought up at a meeting or two at their Japanese HQ?
Most probably it has.
More like past decade actually. In fact, I think Sega's consumer side hasn't pulled in a profit since 1993. Even in the Genesis days their overspending on consumer promotion/advertising/R&D were only subsidized by returns from the arcade business.SegaR&D said:
Not a chance, consumer entertainment will still be in the red. Pretty much every Sega release this year has underperformed, Take Two is taking over the ESPN line, Sammy's chaotic reshuffling of the R&D teams (twice in one year even), Mizuguchi's very public exit, the Osamu Tezuka licesning deal failing to make results... 2004's been an exceptionally rough year for Sega. If not for secure profits from the amusement sector, I'd question their continued survival even.Sonic said:
How about Microsoft or Nintendo?SegaR&D said:
Megadrive1988
Veteran
as much as I love SEGA, no they should not re-enter. not with NDS, PSP and the next Gameboy coming. not to mention all the other lesser handhelds now in the market (n-gage, zodiac, etc).
I'm pretty sure the SH3707 is for Sega Sammy
This is the official press release from two years ago-
http://www.pvrgenerations.co.uk/cgi-bin/viewpress.cgi?release=sammy&printer=0
Now two years later the SoC is complete-
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1667467,00.asp
This is the official press release from two years ago-
http://www.pvrgenerations.co.uk/cgi-bin/viewpress.cgi?release=sammy&printer=0
Now two years later the SoC is complete-
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1667467,00.asp
Megadrive1988
Veteran
admittedly, that *is* interesting, SegaR&D. although it does not mean Sega Sammy will enter the market with it.
Dreamcast 2 / Dreamcast sucessor was in development in 1999-2000. but it never made it out of R&D.
edit: I wonder how NAOMI 2 ports to SH3707 would fair, given enough memory.
Dreamcast 2 / Dreamcast sucessor was in development in 1999-2000. but it never made it out of R&D.
edit: I wonder how NAOMI 2 ports to SH3707 would fair, given enough memory.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Sega shouldn't re-enter any races until it figures out how to make games people actually want to play (sports and a few exceptions aside).
I agree with Johnny completely. SEGA has lost its place amongst the hearts of gamers with sub par games that haven't cuaght the masses like SEGA could do it. They need to rethink their strategies.
jarrod, you are wrong on a couple things but mostly spot on. This year wasn't that bad for SEGA other than losing many employees. Sammy will turn the company around.
jarrod, you are wrong on a couple things but mostly spot on. This year wasn't that bad for SEGA other than losing many employees. Sammy will turn the company around.
Sega existed as its own entity while its games were strong enough to lead the way. Until their games are strong enough again they can't pull it all back under one roof--they need to sell through everyone to make out best. And even if they do get a lot better with their games, they've still lost their strength-of-license due to their bowing out after Dreamcast and any new ones (say, Monkey Ball) tend to be associated with the platform(s) they first appeared on rather than Sega itself.
While re-entering the handheld market would not be exactly the same as mainstream consoles, they still wouldn't get the same effect from their first/second-party titles simply because they would still be putting their games through Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft on the home consoles as well. Meanwhile, competition has heated up notably, their name isn't as strong as it used to be (when they still couldn't budge the GameBoy), and their not at all as fiscally sound as they have to be to develop, manufacture, and push a successful product in that market.
I could perhaps see some "concept" machines that take advantage of some of their in-house tech and might attract gamers to it--or perhaps a partnership with a notable cell phone company and a tighter plan to succeed where the N-Gage has failed--but not anything that would directly compete with Nintendo or Sony. They would simply trash their recovery and get nowhere.
While re-entering the handheld market would not be exactly the same as mainstream consoles, they still wouldn't get the same effect from their first/second-party titles simply because they would still be putting their games through Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft on the home consoles as well. Meanwhile, competition has heated up notably, their name isn't as strong as it used to be (when they still couldn't budge the GameBoy), and their not at all as fiscally sound as they have to be to develop, manufacture, and push a successful product in that market.
I could perhaps see some "concept" machines that take advantage of some of their in-house tech and might attract gamers to it--or perhaps a partnership with a notable cell phone company and a tighter plan to succeed where the N-Gage has failed--but not anything that would directly compete with Nintendo or Sony. They would simply trash their recovery and get nowhere.
Megadrive1988 said:
For all we know all the SH3707 really is is probably a die shrunk SH-4 and PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC-CLX2) combined into a single integrated silicon wafer (or something like that, I could be wrong)
Basically the original DC's SH-4 and PowerVR 2 were produced on a .25 micron engineering process resulting in a very hot 200Mhz and 100Mhz clock speeds respectively and that was way back in 1998.
Fast foward to 2004 or even 2005 or whenever the SH3707 reaches production and if its produced on .13 micron process it could definetly fit inside a pocket sized handheld while running cool and consuming very little energy.
But thats just my theory.
Megadrive1988 said:
Although it never made it out of R&D if we look at the Hikaru and NAOMI 2 techspecs we could make a theory that a NAOMI 2 combined with a DVD-Rom drive would make for a pixel perfect Virtua Fighter 4.
Best of all SEGA (back then in that alternate universe) would not have had to spend much money making such a console because all that is being added is:
a second PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC-CLX2), the Geometry Processor : Custom Videologic T+L chip "Elan" (100mhz) and at least double the ammount of system/video ram found in Dreamcast plus the DVD-Rom drive.
Of course we all know really what happened in our reality, PS2's hype allowed the press to bash the DC and put it down by constantly mentioning how said DC game will also be on PS2 and telling us (the masses and even the hardcore) to ignore the DC exclusive RPGs and pay all of our attention to Square's PS2 only FF series. Constantly bringing up the names SegaCD, 32X and Saturn even though we were in the year 2000!! constantly driving in our head the fact that the PS2 can play dvds and PSX games, even though Sony had no A, AA and much less AAA PS2 games in 2000 you could just settle and play enhanced PSX games instead of checking out DC's lineup. Constantly saying how the PS2 opening graphics were so superior when in fact the PS2's 4MB vram crippled it. Totally ignoring and downplaying any of Sony's overheating consoles and other problems.
Of course the XBox and GameCube's combined launch was not going to help. Mainly M$ stepping in would always have caused SEGA to think twice before trying to stay with DC in a fight for 3rd place, but at least M$ was not the villain of the story.
For more info on SEGA's Naomi arcade hardware and other here:
http://www.system16.com/sega/index.html
Finally as for Naomi2 to SH3707 or Dreamcast conversion, definetly lower detail to fit in a small screen.
But I feel that the handheld market is not about specs and power, its about games, Nintendo has constantly proved this over the years and they have built up a proprietary fleet of dinasty like proportions.
Knowing that I would have to say that only if SEGA can come up with "handheld hit" material would the console sell but I feel that no, unless Microsoft helps SEGA out since DC used WinCe and therefore it would have to be a joint M$+SEGA+Sammy type of deal for me to say yes.
Sega Sammy is actually a very cash healthy company. Their consumer division is still underperforming fiscally, but one cleared hurdle is that their sports line, which has been catastrophic to their profits in the last few years, has been selling enough to pay back much of its expenses even though it's discount priced and Take Two is splitting the money.
The SH3707 as an enhanced, die-shrunk SH4+PVR2DC is interesting conjecture. It was uniquely pitched as a Dreamcast-on-a-chip even though comparable SuperH and PowerVR cores -- using MBX though -- had already been combined into SoCs before... but then, maybe the SH3707 is looked at in that perspective because it's actually intended for gaming devices. The way the engineers talked about making improvements on the Dreamcast technology to yeild this better performance is also a little suggestive, but the reports of the SH3707 have clearly stated it using MBX technology. Some derivative of MBX would make the most sense from a mobile SoC perspective, yet the specs of the device make it seem somewhat custom all together. The conjecture also brings up ideas about compatibility, but MBX is seemingly more closely related to Series 3 (Kyro) than Series 2.
SH3707 must be some kind of MBX, but Renesas and Imagination Technologies will actually have to start talking about it in the first place... which would depend on the licensee's schedule.
The SH3707 as an enhanced, die-shrunk SH4+PVR2DC is interesting conjecture. It was uniquely pitched as a Dreamcast-on-a-chip even though comparable SuperH and PowerVR cores -- using MBX though -- had already been combined into SoCs before... but then, maybe the SH3707 is looked at in that perspective because it's actually intended for gaming devices. The way the engineers talked about making improvements on the Dreamcast technology to yeild this better performance is also a little suggestive, but the reports of the SH3707 have clearly stated it using MBX technology. Some derivative of MBX would make the most sense from a mobile SoC perspective, yet the specs of the device make it seem somewhat custom all together. The conjecture also brings up ideas about compatibility, but MBX is seemingly more closely related to Series 3 (Kyro) than Series 2.
SH3707 must be some kind of MBX, but Renesas and Imagination Technologies will actually have to start talking about it in the first place... which would depend on the licensee's schedule.
Virtua Fighter 4 rebuilt for an SH3707 could probably match the arcade version on a handheld. The similar processing architecture would help quality be more exact while the performance requirement is lessened by the lower resolution target. Using the much lower-specced-yet-similar-looking assets of the PS2 version, which were even in-range for Dreamcast, the powerful Renesas SoC could start scaling up from there until it looked virtually indistinguishable from the arcade version playing on the smaller screen.
SegaR&D, have you failed to read my original post in this thread. It is the first reply to the thread in case you missed it. No I do not think there will be a new SEGA hand held in the near future. SEGA's name is too tarnished and they would have to do a 180 in terms of software quality. Three ace titles a year (ace = excellent) for such a big dev/pub is not enough. When 80% of what you release is subpar then it would be a disaster for them to release a portable.
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