SEGA and Imagination Technologies Announce...

Any chance for this technology to show up in consumer devices anytime soon, Kristof?

 

The Naomi and Atomiswave lines are going strong as market standards. This partnership always made the most sense, and it's a relief to have the next generation announced.

 

a good news to start the day with.
now, any timeframes when sega could be expected to announce timeframes for deployment of the newly acquired tech (pardon the repetition)?

 

Hm, when you can afford to buy the arcade PCB I would think. AFAIK, no PC manufacturer has shown interest in series 5 yet. Maybe it'll change now after the Sega announcement, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

 

Very nice.

 

so powerVR5 compares roughly to what kind of 3dcard hardware ?
radeon 9600 9800 nextgen ?

 

This is a pretty big deal. SEGA's arcade market is both substantial and growing worldwide, and their decisions lead the way for the standards eventually adopted by many of the other amusement manufacturers. Choosing PowerVR puts it into SEGA's own boards, the boards of those who license from them (potentials like Namco, Tecmo, and a slew of lesser-known companies too), and the boards of those who follow their lead to build a platform from the same technological basis (Sammy with Atomiswave) - leading to a market with early unit potential in the hundred thousands.

Sammy uses the board to power both arcade videogames as well as general amusement machines (some pachinko), and they're aggressively pursuing growth of arcade markets worldwide and into untapped developing countries. A lot of unit demand can arise from these factors given time.

SEGA sees most of its profit coming from the arcade business. It's only expected they'd aggressively extend the standard they've established with PowerVR-based Naomi to another generation, instead of following the lead of the console sector for a derivative board as their lead platform. Gives them better control of the technology, costs, and development cycles. And it's expected that Imagination Technologies was counting on this important market opportunity to give place to a high-end implementation of their latest product... they can work from this solid foundation towards expanding into more markets like the PC again, eventually.

Between all of this and the product wins for MBX, the PowerVR platform will be widespread. Time to promote some custom API!

 

PowerVR series 5 are speculated to be VS/PS 3.0 VPUs (i.e.: same generation as R420/NV40)





BTW, I agree with the others saying that this news is good news

 

darkblu:

The timeframe for this generally goes:

- Img Tech finishes and delivers the technology to SEGA.

- SEGA spends several months developing the first couple games they'll be using to premiere the hardware.

- SEGA waits until the next applicable arcade trade show to unveil the full scope of their plans, including configurations and launch timeframes, to the arcade operators and vendors.

Basically, SEGA's not on the kind of hurried schedule that graphic card and console manufacturers are to hype and launch their tech. We're probably looking at a few months out before we get the solid timeframes set.

 

Looking forward to VF5. I am getting sick of all these VF4 upgrades.

In this new high end arcade board, what do you think the CPU will be ?

 

thanks. btw, which are the significant annual arcade trade shows/events?

 

There is AMOA (http://www.amoashow.com/ or http://www.amoa.com/); JAMMA (http://www.jamma.or.jp/). AMOA and JAMMA are the two big ones and usually where SEGA and other arcade game makers such as Capcom and Namco reveal their new games and plans for hardware.

Regarding Sammy and their use of SEGA developed technology such as Naomi, it no longer matters as the two companies will now be sharing a lot technology wise and I think the reason for that is obvious. Regarding growth in the arcade industry, it is not as high as one thinks but hopefully it will "explode" in North America.

 

God, I hope SEGA is getting some variant of Series 5 -

what else could it possibly be, besides Series 5?

Series 4 was canned(??) right, Series 3 (KYRO) is long since outdated and MBX are for mobile products, so..... 8)

 

dreamcast 2 anyone ?

 

go PowerVR !

 

All at once, now: "Pretty please!"

 

Kristof and Simon F, any comments on Deadmeat's post?

 

He's a cretin.