Let's be seriously realistic here, even for people who like to think of themselves as Sega fanatics.
The Model series arcade boards peaked in 1996, even with overclocked processors and refined assembly based programming its performance was limited to rom storage that was very expensive and became obsolete to Sega's top engineers once they had the NAOMI arcade board and once it was revised to use GD-Rom discs.
Once Sega's top people felt they maxxed out NAOMI aka "beauty above all" in Japanese, they ramped up NAOMI 2 that pretty much squashed N1 and made the Model series look like pong in performance.
NAOMI 3 would have made more sense than some fanatic dreaming up "Model 4" as a follow up but even N3 would have had to use the cancelled SH5 and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR follow up but it just did not, any longer make fiscal or economic spending sense because chips from other companies were just reaching higher levels of performance in floating point calculations, the requirement for 3d game programming.
Rasterisation is so far the most advanced single chip 3d rendering solution that can be as dependable as retail.
If Sega wanted more they can add a second GPU to a custom arcade board but they are not doing that or even bothering to program to the specific chips cpu/gpu to the metal like they used to "last time confirmed" on NAOMI 2.
Instead they are relying on slapped together PC parts and Microsoft's Direct X API, even while preferring to use Nvidia's graphic solutions.
Sega is basically scaling their software for faster hardware that can be easily replaced for upgrade to showcase a higher Dx level everytime.
They could have partnered with and supported Sony's PS3 based arcade solution, and gone "to the metal" once more to claim that 2 teraflop performance and gotten the lead on a higher mark above Sony's inhouse studios.
Then later benefit from that knowledge by working on custom CellBE like PowerXCell based arcade boards as one of the major bonuses they would have an advantage over other devs.
Now this claim on Ray Tracing custom hardware that will need more programming knowledge effort than a quad core PowerXCell, 4GB, GT200x4 sli custom arcade setup to get empty scenes of enviroments with nothing going on other than pretty rooms, no explosions, no smoke trails and you know that there is a performance price on top of what the talent will ask for.
All this and more leads me to call this pure BS, if these guys can only render as a game UT 2004 and Intel can only showcase Quake IV in their solution, then just what kind of hardware will they need to render Killzone 2 and God of War 3?
Last Guardian and even Uncharted 2 and it could have been a Sega game making and breaking news, instead we have no proof that they are excited about technology, at least real tech.
Its time to admit it.
The Model series arcade boards peaked in 1996, even with overclocked processors and refined assembly based programming its performance was limited to rom storage that was very expensive and became obsolete to Sega's top engineers once they had the NAOMI arcade board and once it was revised to use GD-Rom discs.
Once Sega's top people felt they maxxed out NAOMI aka "beauty above all" in Japanese, they ramped up NAOMI 2 that pretty much squashed N1 and made the Model series look like pong in performance.
NAOMI 3 would have made more sense than some fanatic dreaming up "Model 4" as a follow up but even N3 would have had to use the cancelled SH5 and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR follow up but it just did not, any longer make fiscal or economic spending sense because chips from other companies were just reaching higher levels of performance in floating point calculations, the requirement for 3d game programming.
Rasterisation is so far the most advanced single chip 3d rendering solution that can be as dependable as retail.
If Sega wanted more they can add a second GPU to a custom arcade board but they are not doing that or even bothering to program to the specific chips cpu/gpu to the metal like they used to "last time confirmed" on NAOMI 2.
Instead they are relying on slapped together PC parts and Microsoft's Direct X API, even while preferring to use Nvidia's graphic solutions.
Sega is basically scaling their software for faster hardware that can be easily replaced for upgrade to showcase a higher Dx level everytime.
They could have partnered with and supported Sony's PS3 based arcade solution, and gone "to the metal" once more to claim that 2 teraflop performance and gotten the lead on a higher mark above Sony's inhouse studios.
Then later benefit from that knowledge by working on custom CellBE like PowerXCell based arcade boards as one of the major bonuses they would have an advantage over other devs.
Now this claim on Ray Tracing custom hardware that will need more programming knowledge effort than a quad core PowerXCell, 4GB, GT200x4 sli custom arcade setup to get empty scenes of enviroments with nothing going on other than pretty rooms, no explosions, no smoke trails and you know that there is a performance price on top of what the talent will ask for.
All this and more leads me to call this pure BS, if these guys can only render as a game UT 2004 and Intel can only showcase Quake IV in their solution, then just what kind of hardware will they need to render Killzone 2 and God of War 3?
Last Guardian and even Uncharted 2 and it could have been a Sega game making and breaking news, instead we have no proof that they are excited about technology, at least real tech.
Its time to admit it.