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Sega, Nintendo Team Up To Create New Graphics Board
TimWeigel writes "The Daily Yomiuri is reporting that Sega, Nintendo and Namco are teaming up to create a new commercial graphics board. This new board, the Triforce (tip o' the hat to all the Zelda fans), will reportedly be based on the hardware in the GameCube. The article indicates it will be targeted towards new game consoles, as well as "similar products". A prototype is scheduled to be demonstrated at the 2002 AOU Amusement Expo on 22 Feb."
the Pikachu
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
There are two possibilties. I can see this being used to make it easier to port Sega's and Namco's arcade titles to the GameCube. It may also be used to play GameCube games on other platforms.
But console games, especially Nintendo's, are targeted at their controller. So playing the games on different hardware could be a useless endeavor.
Other then a few development bonuses, I dont really see the upshot.
Besides, Sega has a horrible track record with Hardware.
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Nvidia will crush them for trademark infringement. Triforce is too close to GeForce.
This is definately something I would have never believed just a few years ago. On the other hand, this is a great thing. Nintendo and Sega can team up to bring gamers something great.
Dacs
The first question that comes to mind is: can you update the current cube with the new board? The more upgrading and tinkering you can do to a gcube, the better chance it has in competing with xbox and p2. I'm not sure how much farther it's game titles can carry it...
"Will my machine play this game?"
"Ones who does not possess Triforce cannot play."
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
so why are they calling it triFORCE? everyone names its product with the force suffix! Well, At least they don't call it TriXP, that would be too annoying :)
...
May the force be with you
Life sucks.
i'm so excited! could it be they're making a new PlayChoice 10? i mean, i'd pay 50 cents to play luigis mansion and crazy taxi for 45 seconds a pop!
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
Was the slashdot writeup longer than that press release was? *VBG*
My only question is:
Will it have a VBlank interrupt?
I really hate using a computer widtout a VBLank interrupt, nothing scrolls smooth -(((
Martin Tilsted
... is this the triforce of power, courage, or wisdom?!?!?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
~~~
I saw this news reported at The Madman's Cafe and Magic Box, where it was described as an arcade board, based on the Game Cube architecture. I don't really know where the poster got the idea that it is "targeted towards new game consoles". The Madman's Cafe article has links to the (Japanese) press releases from Sega, Namco and Nintendo.
Isn't the Gamecubes gfx chip an ATI device?
I cant see them being able to use this technology without ATIs cooperation.
Are we anticipating something here? I mean, my car engine will run in products similar to a car, such as a truck :-P
Maybe we'll see this stuck in a homework & boredom console sometime soon.
At least they now have a use for the GameCube boards since the console's doing so poorly. Not only did the PS2 and Xbox far outsell the GameCube in last week's NPD numbers, the GameCube actually rung up only about 600 more sales than the Playstation One.
Its about time they got together and agreed on something... though the only bad part about this is their only real big competition would be Microsoft... Hopefully more minds put together will bring on a good system and not bickering children. We'll have to see and find out I suppose.
-- RJ
I mean, having to journey around, fight Moblins, get the three pieces of the card and THEN assemble it might be more than most consumers are willing to go through.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Last I checked the gamecube had an ATI board... so if it is based on the gamecube, wouldn't this new board be an ATI? Where is ATI in the mix of this anyway...
I'm a huge Nintendo and Sega fan (still think DC best console ever easily), but this sounds kind of pathetic. If the XBox is just a couple year old PIII with a low-end GeForce3 (last year's graphics tech), but still smokes the Gamecube, then why the hell would someone come out with something "new" which is just a clone of the old Gamecube internals? Sega was being cool while ahead of the time using PowerVR hidden surface removal (Kyro 1) together with MIPS/Hitachi. Why not continue with that? Why the hell does it take 3 giant/legendary companies to rehash old ATI technology?
Seeing how Luigi's Mansion was so pathetically short, you'll probably only spend about $2.00 in quarters getting through the entire game.
On the other hand, the speed of Sonic with the fire-throwing power of Mario would probably do us all some good . . .
There's a lot of great gc titles, and many of the better ps2 game are also available for gc. But what really makes the console for me is the promise of a new MarioKart.
Will there be one?
:-[
Nothing against game platforms, I may even buy one someday (yeah, even XBox, provided it runs Linux) -- but I'm afraid NVidia is getting a little lonely.
You know, (as an avid gamer) it suprises me that Nintendo and Sega have been able to keep their head above water. As a matter of fact after Sega's sad attempt with the Dreamcast, I thought for sure they would find themselves up that well known tributary without the proper means of conveyence. While it doesn't come as a total shock that Nintendo is still alive, I do find myself wondering how long Mario will hold them. It seems to me that since the N64 they have been fighting an uphill battle with no real weapons. I think that with this generation of Nintendo, the only saving grace is that they are a full $100 cheaper than the competition. Of course that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
I should have said PCI,that was what I wanted.
Silly hacker TRIXP are for script kiddies...
Sorry I had to....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
The thing that is very different about the gamecube graphics is that it uses compressed textures rather than bitmap textures. I wonder what that means in terms of compatability...
It was just the other day ago... it was this commercial that was pretty much playing in the background about some hedgehog or something. So I looked up and noticed it was a sonic commerical which peaked my interest due to the fact that sega has no hardware anymore. And do you know what happens next? "Sonic... only on Nintendo GameCube". *shudder*... it just doesn't feel right.
It has nothing to do with "Force", really.
Like the article says, it's a tip o' the hat for Zelda fans. The Triforce (beat Ganon at the end of the game for it) was the ultimate goal in the early Zelda games, especially the first one and the SNES's "Link to the Past".
And it makes sense, for three developers (Nintendo, Sega and Namco) are involved.
Therefore, Triforce.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
The story is wrong. Its an arcade board, not a graphics board. This is like a console but for producing arcade games instead, just like there was an arcade version of the Dreamcast sort of (it was of course more powerful), (the Naomi?), and also an arcade version of the PlayStation (the arcade Ridge Racer machine was built on it).
Everyone who couldn't stop laughing at the irony when they first saw "Sonic the Hedghog" for a Nintendo system, raise your hand.
Not a typewriter
If that's the case, nvidia probably wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
I think Dr Peter Venkman said it best: "... dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!"
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Windows, Lindows.
GeForce, TriForce.
Monopoly, Wanabee.
Smell the Money?
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Have Sega and Nintendo REALLY ever teamed up on ANYTHING? We're studying Communists/Nationalists (Chinese revolution) in class now...OHH MAKING CONNECTIONS! inside joke...
-- Weasel Power! The Next Generation Of Automotive Power!
hope its MIPS based and 64bit and not PowerPC which ISA IMHO is pants and only IBM produce chips
while MIPS you can go and get cores and put it ALL
on one chip
MIPS do the 20Kc hard core comeing out of TSMC now
PMC do a chip
broadcom do a dual core chip
NEC do a wacky vr5500 (lots of MIPS B-)
ATI (artX people who did the Gamecube) are doing a SOC mips chip with everthing on board such as MPEG4 and USB/IDE/UARTS + ATI radeon output
AMD do a SOC with 2 net interfaces + USB/UART which runs better than the StrongARM or Xscale at 500MHz
I would bet on the NEC or ATI chips for this
regards
john jones
Sega and Nintendo cooperating.. *cool!!* ;)
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
I believe this is meant for the arcade, which would explain the namco connection. See IGN for the details.
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
Don't bitch about losing your freedom of speech if you're not going to claim responsibility for said speech.
The problem with Linux is that it lacks redundancy and scalability. It was ridiculous how long it took me to get my stupid touchpad on my laptop to work in linux. Then my USB devices weren't working, my firewire as well.
Maybe you're just not that smart?
The nice thing about this board will be, after purchasing it, you will be teleported out of Best Buy, and your life will completely refill.
There will also be some interesting effects if you daisy chain 8 of them.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Dear poster,
Please be warned that you have exceeded your legally mandated acronym allowance for the month of February. Any further acronym usage in the remainder of this month will result in fines accruing.
Additionally in the above post you have exceeded the Maximum Acronym Density (MAD) permissable for a single posting. If you persist in using excessive numbers of Acronyms Capital letters will be forcably removed from your vocabulary.
Regards
Assoc. for National Acronym Reduction and Systematic Elimination
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
The Triforce is a new add of for the BOTTEM of the Gamecube that hooks up in the expansion bay, I dont know if you guys remember this but they had a similar product it was called the DD64(Disc Drive 64) Do you remember? Nintendo Never released it for the N64, hopefully they will wont do the same for the triforce. The DD64 Let you play Discs (CDS) and they were going to make the next Zelda using it. But I guess Miyamoto Cancled it. It also would let you add new courses to games Like FZERO and waveracer. Very cool product. The DD64 drifted further into the sea of vaporware, Nintendo shifted the title to the cartridge format. Fans worried that this would mean a reduction in playable content, until Nintendo announced that Zelda 64 would be the largest cartridge ever produced: 256 megabits, or 32 megabytes. With cartridges half the size of DD64 discs and the flagship title gone to console, the future of Nintendo's add-on became far less certain.
So You can see Nintendo Has done stuff like this in the past, I remember seeing this bad boy at E3 , Just because Nintendo makes a new board doesn't mean they will release it.
My 2 cents
keanmarine.com
Most likely the graphics board is going to be aimed at the arcade hardware and home entertainment industry market, not the home user. The article is short on information, but don't you think if a card geared toward consumers were being demoed on Feb. 22, that we'd have heard press about it now?
This card most likely has nothing to do with the home segment at all. It will be marketed toard third-party arcade and home entertainment vendors, as well as used for Sega's and Namco's arcade hardware needs. Believe it or not, a lot of the bigger arcade games these days are powered by basically PC's with powerful graphics boards, like the ones of Quantum3D. Heck, 3Dfx got its start with arcade graphics chips, and the Voodoo 2 powered more than just PC's--arcade games as well.
So, I'd bet that this is not the least bit geared towards the end user.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Linux does not and will not have a future
Yes - that's exactly why companies like Sun and IBM are adopting it, because it is total unreliable crap. Obviously you are the type of user who tends to judge things based on his own inability to use them.
And Sony? Sony's pretty much failed with their game business - the PS2 was issued way later it had to be to make some real money...
Nintendo did release the N64 Disk Drive in Japan, with games like the the F-Zero Expansion Kit. BTW, the largest cart that I know of is Metal Slug 3 for the Neo Geo, it weighs in at 708 Megabits... As far as I know, the Triforce is Arcade hardware. The Triforce is to the Gamecube what the Naomi was to the Dreamcast.
I think he's referring to Sega's general attitude of 'get it out faster, even if that means it's missing some wizzbang features'.
Sega Master System: Superior to the Nintendo Entertainment Center... actually I'm not sure why it failed to seriously compete with Nintendo. I remember wanting one, but Nintendo was the way to go then.
Genesis: More powerful than competition, but virtually no customer hardware. The SNES was slower, but kicked the Genesis's butt graphically.
Game Gear: Sega's answer to the Game Boy, with whoo-dee-doo-battery eating-too large-but at least it has a color screen- features. This system was a pitiful portable system. It didn't fit in your pocket, battery life as 3 hours on 6 AA's, and the screen wasn't really that clear.
SegaCD: this one's debatable. The SegaCD had a faster processor, and the 1x CD ROM, that's about it tho. Yet it cost about 2x what the Genesis did, plus you needed the Genesis. The games ranged from suck to mediochre. I think the hardware was mostly untapped, but they made the horrible mistake of sticking with the original Genesis's palette of 64/512 colors. So the whoopee full screen video looked like Windows in 16 color mode trying to play a DVD.
32x: Supposedly the SaturnJR. I think Sega's marketing was trying to act like the car industry by offering the low cost version and the luxury version of their systems. They didn't seem to realize that companies don't want to develop CD based games, and then watered down cartridge ports of those games also that would presumably sell for a lower price. Fat chance. The hardware was ok, but never fully utilized.
Saturn: Oh my.. if you opened one of these bad boys up, you'd have computer guts spilled all over the place. The Saturn was intended to be a SNES asskicker. But Sega didn't think that 3D Games would be that interesting. When the Playstation was announced, the pres of Sega said "we need to do 3D too.", so a second processor was band-aided into the Saturn. Result? A 2D machine tried to compete in a 3D market. It was too difficult to program for, and rather inferior to the PS 3D capabilities. I think Sega would have been better off sticking with the 2D approach and giving people a reason to own both systems.
Sega Dreamcast: This is where Sega actually got it right. They used semi-custom hardware (I think.. I haven't researched this machine as much as I have the others.) It was fairly innovative. It was cheap. And the developers had no trouble cranking out kick ass games. I have no complaints about this sytem. It's too bad Sega didn't go this route a few years ago.
Before the Dreamcast came out, Sega was designing hardware with off the shelf parts. I guess they did good with what they had, but it lead to their downfall. I think their biggest blunder was trying to keep the Genesis as the central attraction.
"Derp de derp."
Allow me to clairify. I was not refering to the potential of the hardware. I was refering to Sega's commercial success with that hardware. How many people do you know actually any of the following?
The Master System cartridge adaptor for the Genisis.
The SegaCD.
The Sega 32X.
The Sega Nomad.
Some of their ideas were quite good, but were outright unsuccessful. The Sega Saturn was rushed due to fear of the Sony Playstation. If they had not rushed it, they might have been able to succeed with that system outside of Japan. The Dreamcast was a great system, and easy to program for (easier then the PS2). But Sega was unable to secure the Developer support, and that was largely because of how poorly the Saturn had done.
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Triforce has been around since the first zelda, circa 1987, IIRC. Anyone know when nvidia came on to the scene?
However, as Glytch pointed out below, "Triforce" is a trademark for an item in entertainment software, not graphics hardware. Nvidia may have a case because it's the first to name a hardware device with a coined name containing "force" as the second half of a spondee. "Triforce" and "Geforce 3" would sound confusingly similar to some people I know.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sounds better than Nintega
You make it sound like the Gamecube is inferior to both the XBox and PS2. The cube is more powerful than the PS2 but is roughly on the same level as the XBox. So why the need for an upgrade?
The gcn needs more processing power than the xbox to make up for the xbox's greater storage space for FMV. Remember what happened with N64 vs. PSX: where PSX used FMV, N64 had to use polygons.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But what really makes the console for me is the promise of a new MarioKart.
Do you really think that Nintendo will fix most of the bugs in the Mario Kart series' design and implementation?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Let's not forget the the DD64 was only the latest non-cart media castoff from Nintendo. There is the most famous one of all, the Playstation. OK, the PSX as is was not designed to be used by the Big N, but they did comission Sony to produce a cd addon for the SNES, which they later dropped. Sony picked up the pieces and decided to roll their own, morphing the unit into what we now know as the original Playstation.
Thanks Big N!
Seeing that Sega a fallen company is involved I would be kinda scared to trust it, however being that Nintendo is invloved I definetely don't trust it. Substandard kiddie game console companies trying to stay alive is what I see! P.S. Don't get me wrong, these are two companies that i used to love and give much credit to my right upbringing!
is this the triforce of power, courage, or wisdom?
Probably the Triforce of power consumption and heat dissipation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The thing that is very different about the gamecube graphics is that it uses compressed textures rather than bitmap textures. I wonder what that means in terms of compatability.
Both GCN and recent DirectX can use S3 texture compression. For each 4x4 pixel block, it stores two full (16 or 32 bit) colors, plus 16 bytes of blending information (0 = all color#1; 255 = all color#2). It produces an effect similar to that of JPEG but doesn't require nearly as much computation to get the value of a pixel.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I can't remember nintendo doing arcade games (apart from Super Nintendo's mated with coin slots to make an arcade jukebox machine) so I speculate the reason why they're doing this is so they can port arcade to gamecube easily.
In addition to the PlayChoice 10 (similar to what you described), Nintendo has produced several other arcade products such as early games on the NES-derived VS Multisystem platform and then Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sintendo. Sounds better than Nintega
A long time ago, back in the Windows 3.1 days, Nintendo and Microsoft were looking at creating a legitimate emulation product. Yes, I really did read about a product called "Wintendo"; the screenshot in the newspaper showed Super Mario Bros. 3 running in a 256x240 pixel window. If the XBox craps out, watch it happen.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I am simply curious (and offer no opinion on it) if nVidia would try to fire up a litigation gun aimed at the name chosen. Regardless of whether they would win or not, regardless of whether or not the name comes from a very old Zelda (Nintendo) game item/idea and regardless of whether anyone agrees, disagrees or doesn't care one way or another. I just would like to be a fly on the wall to find out if nVidia lawyers are discussing this right now.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
...since their graphics chip is in the Gamecube. Will they be making the chip for the new board, or are they basically getting cut out of the loop?
Reminder: find a new sig
The Triforce 3D Rendering Engine: Because if you don't have the Triforce, then GAME OVER RETURN OF GANON
Thanks for clearifying that bit.Three things:
1. It doesn't make sense that Nintendo would be releasing a new video controller for the PC without ATIs involvment.
2. You don't want ATIs own tech to cut into their sales would you?
3. Nintendo would be pretty stupid to attempt selling a new GC-like video controller in the PC world, when the PC vidcard market place is currently owned by Nvidia(followed by ATI playing catchup). I mean Nintendo's offering would have to be competitive.
I don't see much in the line for the Triforce and in it's self it's not very exciting, but if Sega and Nintendo can agree to get on with hardware, we may yet see that the next console Ninty release will by a collaboration. Sega may have gone from being the industry's plaything to the industry's lord when it ditched hardware production, but I think Nintendo are worried about getting a bit of a hammering by Sony and MS. In a year or so, Sega might say "We're going to be involved with Gamecube 2 production, and our software will be GC2 exclusive." And that, everyone, would officially be the Best Thing ever.
:)
It would give gamers a straight choice:
a) Western "realism" games: games focused on their graphics and physics engines during development. This is definite Xbox/PS2 territory.
b) Japanese games: Games focused on providing a shedload of fun, no matter how ludicrous the basic premise is. Super Monkey Ball anyone?
I'd go for door number 2 myself. That is not to say there are huge exceptions to my insane logic: Final Fantasy and Shenmue for example are as fine as Japanese games get, but are steeped in realism. They also have something quite a few Western games seem to lack: fun. But I'm rambling off-topic now. Just one of my little insights
And as long as it doesn't come with a #^*%(@#^$ Navi Office Helper, I'll put my money behind them.
"Link! It looks like you're working on a resume! Would you like to know their weakness? Look! Look!"
Ok, that was lame. But not as lame as this cheap shot at Nintendo.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
I read about this on www.planetdreamcast.com and it seemed this board would be used in arcade games not in computers as this posting implies.
If it was just Sega, yes, but at this point I have gotten utterly sick of nintendo. If it ever starts getting original instead of getting other companies to make up stuff and let them cash in on it. I miss Sega. There are no winners in the console war, but the losers are plentiful, they pay 200-300$ for it. I'm unfortunately one of them. Ugh. -Archan
Blah to the skins and Blah to the punks and Blah to the world and everybody sucks.
Ok, so the /. headline is almost as big as the linked article itself, and the article states nothing of this nature, but wouldn't it be cool if they put this new board into PCs as well as the arcade? Then maybe ATI, GC graphics, could pull their head out of their arse and release a product that's as good or better than whatever nVidia kicks out. Or at least, they'd be working with 3 huge game dev houses who know exactly what kind of technology they want, even if they don't port them to PC, in future chips. So they'd get an idea of what they need to do...cough...drivers...cough...to try and regain some pc market share by providing a better product.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
After all, it was Namco chips that powered Sony's PS1.
It broke my heart to see Sega release Crazy Taxi on PS2. Sure, I have seen Sega games come to other platforms for years (Atari, NG Pocket, Gameboy), but the true competetive platforms were offlimits (NES/SNES/TG16/PS1+2). However with MS in the fray and PS2 still kicking ass, I am pleased to see the old school get together to whoop up on M($)ony. Of course, when PSBox codenamed Gannon comes out, they better watch out!
And whoever that fool was out there that asked who owned 32X, SegaCD, Master System and Saturn, I wave my hand. I have the Nomad (that I play everynight before I go to bed) and the X'Eye as well. Got the Sega Mod for the LaserActive too. Anyway, Sega has serious hardware experience, maybe with the banner year this past year for the industry they will try to regroup on their own platform in a few years.
In the past, 3DfX produced arcade chips (in fact, that was their business before they got into the PC gaming business...) and it could just as easily happen again. There will always be someone out there looking for that extra drop of speed or flash on their machines- and will plunk down cash for it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
One of the more interesting aspects of the Triforce is that it will be able to interface with the GameBoy Advance and GameCube memory cards. You'll be able to save your data (for example in Super Smash Bros. Melee) at home and take that with you to the arcade. You'll be able to raise a Chao on your GBA and enter it into a battle in the arcade.
Also, since Nintendo has been out of the arcades since the early-mid 90's, I think it's pretty likely that this means that Killer Instinct 3 is on it's way (their last big arcade game.)
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
It's striking that this news hits about the same time that the Big N starts putting legal pressure on Zophar's Domain. It seems obvious to me that putting GameCube hardware into a PC will make GameCube emulation that much easier to accomplish. The only thing that might be in the way now is just how proprietary the disc format is.
It's striking that this news comes out right around the same time that the Big N starts putting pressure on Zophar's Domain.
It seems obvious that if you put GameCube hardware into a PC it will become that much easier to write a GameCube emulator. Why try to translate between console-native code and Direc3D or OpenGL when you can just feed in the machine-native code directly? The only speed bump I see after this is the question of those proprietary disks.
Isn't the graphics hardware in the Game Cube made By ATI?
Got Athlon?
When is the new Metroid coming out?
Sonic the Hedgehog was actually developed for the Super Nintendo some years ago. I've been unable to find any real info on the game, but I've found the rom which works fine on the Zsnes emulator. It's not as nice as the genesis sonic games, and not as fast either.. I wonder if it was made by Sonic Team?
heh, re-reading the page I just found, it turns out it's just a hack :)
Nevermind.
isn't the rest of the gamecube based on modified powerpc architecture? my guess is that the Triforce will probably be made from motorola graphics chips nobody's seen yet.
The CPU is made by IBM and is called "Gecko" and Motorola had nothing to do with it. The graphics core was made by ArtX (now owned by ATI) and Motorola had nothing to do with that either. The disc drive is made by Matsushita and once again Motorola had nothing to do with it. Am I not seeing something that makes this a PowerPC relative? Mac doesn't have the CPU, disc drive, or graphics subsystem. Seems rather unique to me, but nice try there.
The Ridge Racer arcade machine predated the Playstation and in fact it was a port of this game to the Playstation that was the console's first game.
The Ridge Racer arcade hardware was vastly more capable than the Playstation with several times the display resolution more than a dozen times the polycount and capable of gouraud shading and texturing all of those polys.
No problem. I am here to serve. Thank you , drive through!!!
-J
With this new Triforce board coming out, one can only wonder if it's real purpose is to be able to port arcade games to Gamecube with super ease, making it a trojan horse or sorts...
It should also be notted that Nintendo is considering developing a way where you could save high scores, secret characters, etc from the arcades, and be able to bring it home and play it on your cube. I belive Sega has been testing this technology in Japan.
Whatever the case, if it gets some more good games to the Cube, as well as strengthens relations with Namco and Sega, then i'm all for it.
Of course, this is all just meaningless facts and unsupported conjecture on my part ;)
-J
Nintendo (of Europe) says they will be releasing games on GCN as they will in the arcade. The hardware in Triforce is the same as in a GCN, so porting isn't even an issue. I'm sure there will be some sort of modifications made to a triforce board to but Nintendo says Triforce games will be available for cube right off the bat. The arcade and home versions will get released simulataniously.
Also of interest is the GBA compatibility. Triforce will be GBA combatible and will trade info will your home version. Soul Caliber 2 will work this way, with you having to buy a seperate GBA cart.
So all in all it is a very curious affair. Even Capcom is going to be working on something.
According to an article (Firingsquad, I think) about the history of nVidia, the Saturn used quadratic or curved surfaces as opposed to the polygons that are now standard. It's said that made the Saturn tougher to develop for than the PSX. Some said they were ahead of their time but quadratic surfaces were apparently killed off by Direct3D.
This is all, I remind you, based on an article I read about nVidia. I don't know all that much about the technologies.
I think what some people fail to understand is that the Triforce is an arcade board and that's not where Sega had their troubles. With arcade machines, people buy the hardware and game in one package. It's just a different market.
Ok, I'll bite :) Just because this thread is getting very interesting, I decided to do some research about the Genesis. Very cool stuff here. It seems it's VERY closely related to Amiga hardware. A 68000 processor at *about* 8 mhz (amiga 500), 1mb of system ram, 512 possible colors. Here's where it gets interesting (and amigans will recognize the term) "Though the Genesis could only display a maximum of 64 colors at any given time, special software techniques such as HAM (Hold and Modify) could be used to boost color output. Such a technique was used in the game "Eternal Champions", which had an output of 256 colors. Sega CD Based games (such as "Snatcher") also used this method."
So, the Amiga used HAM to get 4096 simultaneous colors, whereas the Genesis used it to get 256 simultaneous. Most impressive. For those that didn't hit the link up there, also note that the Yamaha FM chip was superior to the opl2/3 chips used in Sound Blaster cards around that same time.
I take exception to the comment that the SNES had better sound. Sure it had dolby, but there were some amazing soundtracks on games like Revenge of Shinobi and Street Rage. Samples vs. synthesis.
Thanks for all the interesting comments, it's rare to see a chain of interesting posts that don't degenerate into mudslinging. :)
Heh, it is nice to have a civil discussion, isn't it?
I vaguely remember reading about the HAM technique you mentioned. I think SNES used a similar technique in Killer Instinct, too, where it displayed 512 instead of 256 colors. Unfortunately, I think I got that bit of info from Electronic Gaming Monthly, so consider the source if you know what I mean.
Regarding the sound on the SNES, my comment about the sound being superior comes from having a rather sensitive ear. The SNES definitely had a better range of capabilities than the Genesis did. Take, for example, in Super Mario World whenever Mario was in a cave. Everything would echo inside the cave. Final Fantasy 3 had what sounded like a chorus chanting/singing, that was pretty cool. Voices in Mortal Kombat sounded pretty good on the SNES, but on the Genesis they sounded like they had laryngitis (sp?). The Genesis always sounded like midi to me. I think I remember reading that the SNES had a really cool Yamaha sound chip in it, but I don't have much more info than that.
I think most people would agree that the SNES consistently had better sound than the Genesis. I'm not talking about music here, I'm talking about sound in general. Heh, I really did like the music in the first Sonic game.
"Derp de derp."
Mario and Link aren't Nintendo's only strong cards. What about Samus Aran (Metroid) and the whole Pokemon craze?
Not to mention Donkey Kong, Perfect Dark and other gems by Rareware in the UK. Like Fox McCloud of Starfox (Starwing) fame?
And seriously, who else could create novel games like Pikmin and pull it off in style, the way Nintendo did?
Granted, the N64 was not the great success it could have been. But if they don't always deliver the hardware, they at least deliver the games. You may not like them personally, but they are incredibly popular. Note that I've mostly mentioned specific characters above. Nintendo also have great games without any particularly known character in the "lead role", such as Wave Race, as well.
In any case, claiming that Nintendo relies on a couple of games/characters is just plain wrong.
On another (on-topic) note: Sega and Nintendo teaming up is a dream come true. The two companies would be able to grab large parts of the video game market if they put their creative brains together. Well, at least they are cooperating on this project. It would be great if Sega and Nintendo joined forces in the consumer market, and gave Sony and Microsoft some real competition. However, the GameCube is far from dead! It must be considered to be a great success.
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aah. i was partially mistaken at least, my bad. i had just assumed that motorola was behind it because i had heard it was ppc based.