Slashdot Mirror
Sega to develop Dreamcast PCI Card
Fervent writes "Sega plans on developing a PCI card to put in your box that will play Dreamcast games." The bit is pretty much a total rumor with no evidence at all, but it sure would be nifty.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I worked for 3DO when this product was developed. The idea was to tap into the PC gamer market which (it was thought) was more willing to pay >$400 for a gaming peripheral. Unfortunately, as conceived by the executive staff at 3DO, the idea was a non-starter.
Here are the bone-headed moves Sega needs to avoid to increase their chances of success:
The 3DO at that time only had drivers for a particular bug-ridden 2X CD-ROM drive from Matsushita. Fortunately for Creative, this was the same drive they were already offering. Customers who didn't already own this drive either had to buy one or were SOL.
Though the claim was never made outright, the PR for the 3DO Blaster hinted very strongly that the Blaster would offer its services to the PC, like any other PC peripheral. That is to say, 3CO/Creative left the impression that the 3DO Blaster would accelerate your PC games. This was not true (nor, as best I recall, was it ever intended to be). The 3DO Blaster card was a world unto itself; all it "shared" was your PC display, CD-ROM drive, and power supply.
3DO was intensely paranoid about "piracy", but for different reasons. 3DO executives saw the Multiplayer machine (we called it Opera) as their "property" and, in order to execute code on their "property", you had to sign a manufacturing/licensing agreement whereby you paid $3/disc (later raised to $6). This was ostensibly the licensing fee for the operating system (Portfolio) we provided. But what if you loaded in all your own code and/or data, such that nothing running in Opera's memory was copyrighted by 3DO (so you didn't have to pay them a fee for it)? 3DO was intensely paranoid this would happen, and went to extraordinary technical lengths to make certain that not one single byte of data entering the machine hadn't been paid for. Thus, the only way data entered the 3DO was through the CD-ROM drive off a licensed 3DO disc. Period. All other channels were sealed off. Thus the 3DO Blaster offered nothing over a stand-alone unit, except more complicated PC configuration. (It originally shipped for Windoze 3.1; I don't know if it ever got updated for Windoze 95.)
All in all, though it gave us some practice dealing with the PC architecture, I felt the project was a waste of resources. Of course, 3DO was wasting a lot of resources back then, but that's another flame entirely.
Disclaimer: I am a former 3DO employee, with a total tenure of 4.5 years, laid off in one of their countless "reorganizations" (though, to their credit, they were nicer to me about it than they were to almost everyone else). I felt, and still feel, betrayed by the executive staff's failure to capitalize on what we had created by the blood, sweat, tears, and love we had poured into those machines.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I thought one of the major selling points of the DC (to developers) was that it was hard to copy games b/c PC CDROMS can't read the GDROMs used (BTW, they can hold ~1GB IIRC). So how do I get the game TO my computer? Also, what would go on a PCI CARD??? as best I can tell, impediments to playing DC games are: different ISA (OK, we put a CPU on the card or emulate), different graphics, put a graphics chip on the card? seems mre likely than a CPU. And then problems with peripherals like the GDROMs. so what the heck would a PCI card do if it wasn't a graphics card, which seems like overkill to me? This rumor seems a bit far-fetched.
I'm not sure what to say about the rumor but there are legit reasons to do this. Firstly, HD has to be on the horizon for those businesses. Computers offer the resolution, the market, essentially everything you need but there is no risk. HD is a game of chicken, you're not going to buy a $2000 Sony XBR SD TV because HD is coming. You're not going to buy a $3500 HD TV because there isn't much content. It's a more pointed game for Nintendo, Sega and Sony because they can't field 2 or 3 dreamcasts with different software and different hardware and expect to do well, the whole idea is to create a standard platform. That is the primary strength of game boxes.. With something like this, a Sega or Sony could get in to HD space, start generating software and hardware and not take as big a risk.
Next, this kind of hardware could be fairly cheap to make. It could be a PC on a card that uses PCI for power and nothing else. They could have a pass through video connector that allows you to plug the output of your NVIdia in to the dreamcast card which plugs in to your monitor and write some simple drivers to switch it on or off. The sega would be self contained, you could plug an external drive in, you could plug controllers in to the back of it. It would essentially mean taking the NTSC video out of the sega and putting in digital and then putting the dreamcast on a PCI card, very easy stuff to do. You get no PC benefits, like having a drive but you get an HD monitor, don't have to build qpsk or 8psk modules for the non-existent HD market and the hardware would probably be even cheaper to manufacture than a dream cast since there isn't any packaging. (plus, they have already made these cards as part of their development process...;) Then in 2 years you come out with Dreamcast HD and you already have a software base... That's the easy way.
If they wanted to be ambitious they could use PC resources, which would involve more extensive hardware mods, slick software and possibly special PC requirements, I think it's more risky but there is probably a market for it. If they produced some killer games that only existed if you had a specific $150-$200 PCI card, I could see people buying them. People are already willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a "128MB GeForce mega quad giga ultra deluxe team edition comp" just to play game, a dreamcast is cheaper and has some pretty sweet games.
(eight stories down.....)
"What Will Happen to Sega?" "A reader writes "Sega is getting out of hardware altogether."
So, wich one is it?
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.