Sega's going to make a new console? my thoughts

[Mephiles550]

I hope your in the mood to read xD


There have been rumors of sega making a new console since shortly after the dreamcast was discontinued by Sega and all of those rumors led to disappointment. What makes these rumors any different? Ringedge when first heard was rumored to be a console and it turned out to be an arcade board. IDK what happend to ringwave or ringwide but i'm pretty sure they also arcade boards. I could understand the rumor though since the dreamcast was also based on an arcade board.

Enter segadrive A rumor that was here since 2010 from segaleaks! At first the name just confused me you had the Sony playstation, the Nintendo Wii, ... and the sega segadrive? Thats worse then saying the Microsoft Xbox 360

Sega consoles always tried to be the most advanced(not saturn though) And from what I heard the "segadrive" is supposed to be using raytracing and have more realistic graphics then anything we've seen before
compare the genesis to the NES and which do you think was technically better?

The Sega CD was one of the first CD based games! Game's wise (excluding sonic CD) It sucked but The technology was interesting.
the 32x was originally going to be called the sega neptune and be its own seperate console...AND THATS WHAT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN! the sega CD addon looked good and it had a small charm but this just looked like some mushroom life support thing I think its games are better then the CD's games though.

now the saturn....It's a good console but it's wasted potential...and It makes me want a sonic X-treme remake so bad...games mostly came out for it in Japan and hearing sega say the saturn wasnt their future I just thought to myself wtf.

and now the sega dreamcast! the console we all love! For its time the graphics were amazing and even nowadays it still looks good to look at It was amazing to see sonic in his first TRUE 3d game! (this is definitely were the fanbase went downhill though.) It had some amazing games and the Dreamcast controller idea's would be passes on to the Xbox 1 controller and then the button, analog, and trigger design wise. and it would be passed on to the xbox 360.
The problems with the dreamcast though is that It probably started the obsession nowadays where people prefer graphics over gameplay and that It was released to at a bad time! maybe if the dreamcast had been around longer we would have seen more HD games that would rival the ps2 but probably not the xbox 1.

we've had the 9/9/09 rumor that sega would release the dreamcast 2 and look what that got! MOAR LIEZ!11!! I think MR.sega said something about sonic 4 e2 coming on sega's new console? the game started in development in late January 2011 I think. And zach morris or heneda said that sega wouldn't be working on a 20th anniversary sonic game instead working on the console...THE GAME WAS IN DEVELOPMENT SINCE VERY LATE 2008 or at least that's what's been rumored.

we haven't gotten a single shred of evidence from E3 that says sega's making a new console. I've also seen all of the patents like the supposed sega neptune(segadrive) controller which look's based off the saturn 3D controller. whenever there's a rumored sega hardware patent I always check

Will sega be making a new console for the wii u/xbox 720/PS4?

its a 70% no and a 30% yes chance to me.

How good is sega's reputation getting? nowadays there are people who hate him and sonic everywhere. Sega just started to get better in 2009 they still need some time ESPECIALLY with their mascot they need to wait a few more years to get a better rep. IGN posted an article about how binary domain and captain america are just bland. I can understand captain america but binary domain looks badass in my opinion...the game will probably suffer from cheesy dialogue though.

what games would come out on Sega's new console? Sega's game's cant be bad since their working on their own hardware so there is no excuse for them to not be good, but what would 3rd party developers do? more COD and madden? More bland cash ins? lolno do no want

Sega's games would be great though of course and Sega needs a good list of launch titles or soon to be released titles!

-sonic 4 episode 2
-A sonic game with colors/generations style gameplay
-A new nights
-Powerstone 3
-maybe a phantasy star 2 online port
-A new shinobi
-Billy hatcher
-Shemnue 3 but I REAAAAAAAALLY doubt that's ever going to come out Sega hardware or otherwise
-and so on

Something tells me sega WILL be releasing a new console in the game generation after the wiiU/xbox720/ps4 generation.

I'll eat my words if sega does release a console this gen though.
....and listen to Mr. Bison say "YEAUS!!! YEAUS!!" for an hour xD

Video games are like candy. In the old days of video games Atari 2600-Dreamcast you had all these different types of candy like candy corn, cupcakes, lollipops, gummy worms, tootsie rolls, and excetera...
but nowadays all you get is chocolate. JUST chocolate. They try to spice it up a bit by making chocolate into different things like M&M's and kit-kats but in the end you just miss the old days of CREATIVITY and get so pissed off when you see all these little kids/brats say how awesome the new stuff Is when they probably never seen the golden age. Occasionally someone releases a hidden JEM which is a bag of jolly ranchers but it just gets covered up with all the chocolate and the kids can live with that. Someone just needs to go to the chocolate factory, see willy wonka's greedy nephew and just scream to him "GET SOME CREATIVITY!!"
The kids wont except new candy cause they'll just through it away and get fatter and fatter on the chocolate. They wont except new ideas/things.
There's nothing wrong with chocolate it's just that we need to have more variety in everything. have chocolate once in a while but have more of the other stuff. (true story I havnt had candy corn in about a bit less then a decade XD)

[MrSega]

Interesting thoughts. But as both a hardcore SEGA fan and a SEGA expert I'd like to point out some things.

SEGA CD/Mega CD was not the first CD add on(Turbo CD was) but it was the first successful one. And it sold 6 million units alone in North America. It was a great system, besides Sonic CD, it had noteworthy classics, like Snatcher,Shining Force CD, Final Fight CD, Lunar and many others. Also SEGA CD was developed at the last minute in 1990 after SEGA scrapped plans with Pioneer to design a Laser Disc based Mega Drive which proved to be expensive and overbudgeted and probably would have bankrupted SEGA/CSK at the time. So SEGA and Pioneer argeed to can the project and instead SEGA turned to JVC for cheap CD ROM hardware and to Sony as an OEM, this is where Mega CD was born and what was left of the LD project became "LaserActive".

32X was Sega of America's fault not, SEGA of Japan's. They built it without SOJ's knowledge, this is why American divisions of Japanese game companies shouldn't be trying to build thier own hardware. As I explained in the other topic, SEGANEPTUNE was the codename for the stand alone 32X. The reason why it was scrapped was because SOJ had revealed thier own more powerful,most cost efficiant chipset that they had planned for overseas markets ahead of Saturn called "SEGA Jupiter" which would have been a Model 1 based cartridge system that would have launched in US in 1994.

Also, I forgot to mention to you that SEGA is alot different from its competitors, instead of building consoles from stratch they use modified arcade hardware. Remember ALL SEGA consoles are based off of arcade boards. You have to watch each new arcade machine thats annouced. The only way we'll be able to tell if the SEGADRIVE arcade board has a console with it is if its non PC based. Both LINDBERGH and RINGEDGE are PC based, from what I've heard, SEGADRIVE is not.
I will now give you the complete list of SEGA's consoles and arcade cousins:

[Mephiles550]

-I said the sega cd was ONE of the first not THE first CD based consoles.

-the Sega Cd was a market success your right about that!

-other then sonic CD I didnt really care for the other games but thats just my opinion I can understand if you like the CD's games.

-32x WAS sega america's fault you are right. SOJ had no idea of the 32x since they were working on the SATURN. SOJ told SOA to scrap the 32x and SOA didn't listen when they should have. They should have all been working on the Saturn at once.

-IK about the stand alone 32x project the "Sega Neptune" which Sega is believed to be reusing the name. I also know about the game "sonic mars" which was actually supposed to be released on the genesis at first I think then the 32x then it moved on to sonic X-treme and we all know what happened to that.

-I've been following Sega a long time And I knew that most of their consoles are arcade base I didn't know they were ALL arcade based.

[MrSega]

Here's the list of all of SEGA's home consoles and the arcade hardware they are based off of:

SEGA Mark III/Master System. Based of of heavily powered,upgraded 8-bit hardware. In the 1980s, SEGA had a very successful 8-bit computer line called SG-1000 and home console. SG-1000 was quite powerful for its time and was simluar to ColecoVision, Since Nintendo's Famicom was slightly more powerful and capable of 16 colors and sprites(SG-1000 was only capable of 8), SEGA took thier SG-1000 and pumped new,more powerful sprites and speed up its processing power giving it 64 colors. In 1984, SEGA introduced its newest most powerful 8-bit hardware board at the Time, System E. On July 13,1985 they launched the SG-1000 Mark III in Japan.

Mega Drive/Genesis is based off of System 16B. System 16 was the world's first 16-bit computer line introduced in 1986. Due to it be based off of cellular phone CPU and computer RAM sprites, it was fairly expensive. In November 1986, SEGA's home consumer R&D team "Away 27" set to work on project "SEGA Mega" by early 1988, when it came time to choose the modified hardware to become the console, they discovered that System 16 was still fairly costly due to its 124 colors and extremely fast processors, so they designed two cheaper versions of the same chipset "System 16A" and "System 16B" for the Mega Drive home arcade system, they choose chipset 2 since it ran sprites smoother and was easier to program.

I will debunk some myths about Mega CD. One is that its 16 bit. Its actually 24-bit. SEGA CD comes from System 24 hardware although its more watered down then its arcade cousin. Myth #2 MCD runs on MD's processors. Wrong. MEGA CD uses its own processor, and contains its own internal memory, the only thing SCD uses from Genesis is Genesis' color palletes to add more colors running up to 512. S24 was capable of 1,024 colors which is what I mean when I say watered down. Mega Drive has a clock speed of 7.5- 8.0 MHZ, Super Famicom has a speed of 10.5 or 11.0, SEGA CD runs at 13.0 MHZ.

[Mephiles550]

Well sega is usually called the King of the arcade

the SG-1000 was sega's first home console wasn't it? It looked similar to the atari 5200's game's and capability wise. Also what about the Master system The sega master system was more advanced the the NES but most 3rd party/1rst party developers stuck with nintendo. MS still had plenty of games.

[MrSega]

Mephiles, I'm glad you know that Sonic Xtreme started off in '93 as "Sonic MARS" for 32X/MARS. I'm going to give you the lowdown on SEGA's 32-bit history. It is the most complicating of thier hardware history mainly because there were just way too many chipsets.

It all begin in 1991. When the Genesis started riding high, and Sonic first hit the scene, SEGA put the finishing touches on 2D only System 32 which was System 16's successor and would have been Mega Drive's successor. However, SEGA was fascinated by polygon techology that had been used by NASA in
the late 80s and asked Lockheed Martin to design them 3D techology engines for thier arcade boards. System 32 was completed, released for arcades but plans for a S32 based console codenamed "GigaDrive" were scrapped almost immediately in 1992. From LM, SEGA designed two powerful 3D 32-bit chipsets System 32 Model 1 and Model 2. Model 1 was single precision based and could run up to 500,000 polygons by itself and easy run S32 sprite IPs, Model 2 was even more powerful, running 2 CPUs, using 2 graphic proccessors and able to push almost 1 million polygons(total preformance 900,000 PPS) 2X the preformance of PS1. By the end of 1992, SEGA was ready to roll out these powerful chipsets and soon choose Model 1 as the console. And so, in February 1993, Hayao Nakayama assembled Away 27 to begin work on the powerhouse console project codenamed "Aurora". Since SEGA of America was riding on success, SOJ decided to keep the project top secret. Meanwhile, SOA was wondering what in God's name was going on with Genesis' successor. Fearing the 3DO and Jagaur, SOA imported parts of System 32 hardware and begin development of a 2D only system codenamed "MARS" but SOA wanted to keep investing in the 16-bit market, they decided to build another add on which was litterally drawn on a Napkin! At JAMMA '93 in Japan, SEGA was looking for a rave showing of Model 1 instead, they got unimpressed Japanese consumers and decided that M1 wasn't the wave of the future they thought it was.

[MrSega]

Well sega is usually called the King of the arcade

the SG-1000 was sega's first home console wasn't it? It looked similar to the atari 5200's game's and capability wise. Also what about the Master system The sega master system was more advanced the the NES but most 3rd party/1rst party developers stuck with nintendo. MS still had plenty of games.

Indeed it was. SG-1000 was to Japan that Atari 2600 was to America: That it was the first cartridge based console to be released in Japan in early 1983, several months after SG-1000, Famicom was introduced. Not wanting to be outfoxed by Nintendo, SEGA redesigned SG-1000 into SG-1000 Mark II and launched it in the Spring of 1984.

[MrSega]

Part 2 of SEGA's 32-bit chipset.

There seems to be a popluar myth that SEGA switched the Saturn chipsets because of Playstation, this is absoluetly false and totally untrue. The Nintendo deal with Sony to build a Super NES/Super F CD add on that had lasted 3 years didn't implode until the Spring of 1993. In fact Nintendo Power as late as May 1993 was still being reported. Sony didn't begin turning the add on into a CD ROM based console until late '93 right after finding about Nintendo partnering with Philips which pissed them off(and spent most of 1994 working on PSX). SEGA made the Saturn chipset switch right after JAMMA so they were well ahead of PS1. After Model 1's poor reception at JAMMA, SEGA panicked. They had to hurridly put together a Model 2 based console quickly especially since they learned that Nintendo had begun work on 2 new console projects "Reality" and "Atlantis". Since Model 2 hardware was very expensive, SEGA threw together run-of the mill off the self chips from Lockheed Martin that ran simluar to M2 although lower preformance, they also hired a contractor to build the chips for them. Since Model 1 was abandoned and its console was finalized and since Aurora could run like Model 2 except ran lower res,cheaper 3D engine and slower speed, SEGA dubbed the Model 1 hybrid "Jupiter" and the Aurora Model 2-like hybrid was officially named "Saturn". In order to lower manufacturing costs further, SEGA decided that Saturn would be CD ROM based instead of cartridge based.

Saturn is entierly simluar to Model 2, like M2 it uses 2 CPUs, and 2 3D engines with 500,000 PPS on each of course!Unlike Model 2, Saturn's processors can run either seprately or together combined power can push 900,000 PPS. Model 2's engines run combined power together. Also unlike M2, Saturn uses its own RAM processor and can push up to 4MBs of memory, PS1 could only push 1MBs. PS1 is also only capable of about 400,000 PPS(estimated clocked preformance at 398,000) so Saturn is well ahead of PS1.

[stu]

Mephiles, I'm glad you know that Sonic Xtreme started off in '93 as "Sonic MARS" for 32X/MARS. I'm going to give you the lowdown on SEGA's 32-bit history. It is the most complicating of thier hardware history mainly because there were just way too many chipsets.

It all begin in 1991. When the Genesis started riding high, and Sonic first hit the scene, SEGA put the finishing touches on 2D only System 32 which was System 16's successor and would have been Mega Drive's successor. However, SEGA was fascinated by polygon techology that had been used by NASA in
the late 80s and asked Lockheed Martin to design them 3D techology engines for thier arcade boards. System 32 was completed, released for arcades but plans for a S32 based console codenamed "GigaDrive" were scrapped almost immediately in 1992. From LM, SEGA designed two powerful 3D 32-bit chipsets System 32 Model 1 and Model 2. Model 1 was single precision based and could run up to 500,000 polygons by itself and easy run S32 sprite IPs, Model 2 was even more powerful, running 2 CPUs, using 2 graphic proccessors and able to push almost 1 million polygons(total preformance 900,000 PPS) 2X the preformance of PS1. By the end of 1992, SEGA was ready to roll out these powerful chipsets and soon choose Model 1 as the console. And so, in February 1993, Hayao Nakayama assembled Away 27 to begin work on the powerhouse console project codenamed "Aurora". Since SEGA of America was riding on success, SOJ decided to keep the project top secret. Meanwhile, SOA was wondering what in God's name was going on with Genesis' successor. Fearing the 3DO and Jagaur, SOA imported parts of System 32 hardware and begin development of a 2D only system codenamed "MARS" but SOA wanted to keep investing in the 16-bit market, they decided to build another add on which was litterally drawn on a Napkin! At JAMMA '93 in Japan, SEGA was looking for a rave showing of Model 1 instead, they got unimpressed Japanese consumers and decided that M1 wasn't the wave of the future they thought it was.

System32 is totally unrelated to the Model 1 and Model 2 boards. System32 was a 2D sprite based board and was developed from the previous System 16 and 24 boards. The Model 1 and Model 2 were custom designed by General Electric/MartinMarietta/Lockheed Martin and were purely 3D quad based polygons.

Here's further information on each board from System16

System 32:
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=709

Model 1:
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=712

Model 2:
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=713

The Sega Saturn had nothing to do with the MODEL series of boards. The original Saturn spec called for 1 CPU and the VDP1 chip and was designed primarily with sprites in mind, it was supposed to have similar performance to the System32 board that was at the time Sega’s most advanced arcade board. This system was originally codenamed 'GigaDrive'

However in early 1994, the specs of the Playstation were announced and Sega went back to the drawing board and redesigned the system to incorporate the 2nd SH2 CPU and the VDP2 background display chip.
The version of the Saturn that eventually came out was more of a hybrid between the System 32 and the Model 1 boards, however the Saturn had one advantage over the Model 1 and that was the Saturn's ability to use texture mapping. Model 1 had no texture mapping capability and relied on flat shaded polygons for it's graphics.

[stu]

32X was Sega of America's fault not, SEGA of Japan's. They built it without SOJ's knowledge, this is why American divisions of Japanese game companies shouldn't be trying to build thier own hardware. As I explained in the other topic, SEGANEPTUNE was the codename for the stand alone 32X. The reason why it was scrapped was because SOJ had revealed thier own more powerful,most cost efficiant chipset that they had planned for overseas markets ahead of Saturn called "SEGA Jupiter" which would have been a Model 1 based cartridge system that would have launched in US in 1994.

Sega of Japan were fully aware of the plan to develop the 32X, in fact Hideki Sato, who was in charge of all of Sega hardware development assisted in it's development. The 32X was originally conceived by Sega of Japan as a fully compatible Mega Drive based console with enhanced color capabilities. Sega of America R&D head Joe Miller convinced Sega of Japan to convert it into an add-on to the existing Genesis.

Here is a quote from the SegaBase, written by Sam Pettus

http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index. ... e+32X&bl=y

"The system that would be known as Project Mars was given birth on 8 January 1994, the night before the opening of the 1994 Winter CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a hotel room during a conference among top-level Sega executives from both Japan and America. Those present at this meeting included Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama, Sega of America president Tom Kalinske, his special assistant Joe Miller, Sega of Japan's Hideki Sato, Sega of America's Paul Rioux, and a couple of other Sega of Japan personnel. Surprisingly enough, Nakayama was the one who first broached the subject at this meeting. As such, it is he and not Sega of America's Joe Miller who should be given credit as being "the father of the 32X." Miller remembers this meeting well.

Quite simply, Nakayama-san had directed the company to design and produce a cartridge-based 32-bit platform and bring it to market before the Christmas selling season of 1994. This was a lengthy, somewhat heated meeting - but in the end there was no question that Sega of Japan (in the form of a classic Nakayama mandate) had determined that this was what we were going to do. It was now up to the senior team to figure out and go execute. The difference, this time, was that Sega of Japan was actually inviting Sega of America into the process - instead of creating new platforms in a vacuum and throwing them over the ocean at us when it was too late to have meaningful input .... Sega of Japan was completely committed and was ready to mobilize whatever internal resources were require to finish the design and produce it in quantity for Christmas.As first presented by Hideki Sato and his team of engineers, the original concept for Mars was little more than a Genesis with an extra 32-bit processor (a Hitachi SH-1, according to some reports) and an expanded color palette (128 out of 512 possible colors on screen). Joe Miller, who was in fact chief technical wizard at Sega of America, was appalled at the suggestion. "That is a horrible idea," he told them. "If all you're going to do is enhance the system, you should make an add-on. If it's a new system with legitimate software, great. But if the only thing it does is double the colors ...." There was some grumbling about this, but in the end Sega of Japan conceeded the point. They had several other hardware projects in the works, so this one was to be left up to the Americans. Mars was to be Sega of America's baby, although senior management staff from Sega of Japan would be present and oversee it through to production. By the time all was said and done that could be accomplished at that meeting, Nakayama was so excited at the prospect of Project Mars that he wanted its "core senior design team" to leave CES before it had even started and get started working on the new system right away. Miller, Sato, and the rest wound up attending the rest of the show, but went ahead and began the process during a series of late night meetings in Miller's hotel room over the next four days. What Miller and his associates at Sega of America did not know at the time was that Sega of Japan already had another competing 32-bit nextgen console design under wraps back at home. They would not learn about this new system until work on Project Mars was already well underway.


Project Mars was actually conceived in parallel to another scheme, one that allowed a stock Genesis to play games utilizing special features not found on the console by use of custom chipsets inside the cart itself. It seemed a natural enough approach, as Nintendo was already doing this for the SNES with their Super FX processor and Capcom was doing the same with their C4 chip. The Super Virtual Play (SVP) concept was thus born, and all three of Sega's current 32-bit AM2 arcade wonders - Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, and Virtua Racing - were considered to test the idea. These are the only confirmed SVP carts, although there are a few reports that SVP treatments of both Virtua Fighting and Star Wars Arcade were also briefly considered. Virtua Racing was the title that was finally chosen to test the technology, and it also wound up as the only SVP cart ever released. It proved too expensive for Sega to continue developing, and thus the SVP concept died a premature death. Project Mars would prove to be the superior approach to such sophisticated arcade conversions on Genesis hardware."