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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."
Actually, the Sega AM2 and AM3 was a pretty respectible hardware platform at the time.
"Besides, Sega has a horrible track record with Hardware."
They have problems selling their hardware not designing it. I still love my dreamcast. IMHO I think it's a nifty piece of electronics.
I'm very happy that Sega still has some hardware R&D.
"END COMMUNICATION" ?
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...
If there were going to name it after a Pokemon, they might have gone for "Porygon"; according to Pokemon lore, Porygon is a virtual Pokemon created in a computer.
Alternatively, since this is a graphics board, maybe "Smeargle" would have been suitable. (Smeargle is the painter Pokemon; paint oozes from its tail).
-Stephen
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).
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.
The board "flipper" was actually developed by a company called ArtX, which has since been aquired by ATI.
I believe this is meant for the arcade, which would explain the namco connection. See IGN for the details.
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in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
that would be the Model 2 and Model 3...
Sega AM2 is one of Sega's 10 software teams along with Sonic Team, Sega Rosso, WOW Entertainment, Hitmaker, Wavemasters (GODS of video game music), Overworks, Amusement Vision, Smilebit, and UGA.
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
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.
Sega Master System: Two problems. Not enough games and the pause button was located on the console itself (like the 7800, who the hell wants to get up and go over to the system just to pause the damned game?)
Genesis: Wasn't a whole lot more advanced than the PC Engine/Turbografx. Hell, some Turbografx games looked a lot better because it could at least display 256 colors simultaneously. The SFC/SNES had superior graphical and audio capabilities, therefore the Genesis eventually died. Out of all of Sega's systems, this was probably the most successful.
Game Gear: Big, ugly and quickly drained batteries. The Lynx and Turboexpress were both superior, but the Gameboy had the games and allowed you to play for more than an hour before having to change batteries.
32X: The biggest joke to ever come out of Sega. This type of kludge is probably what we would have seen on the SNES had Nintendo not screwed Sony over on the original PlayStation concept. The 32X only offered marginally better perfomance than the standalone Genesis, and didn't even beat out the SNES when it came to graphics and sound (compare Doom for both of those systems, the SNES version is still better).
Sega CD: 64 colors, WTF were they thinking? The TurboCD and TurboDuo were better than this.
Saturn: Was stomped by the PSX. Its 2D capabilities really were no better than the PSX's, it just had more memory so it could hold more sprites and frames, BFD. 3D was in by this point, so almost nobody cared about 2D games (and you could always recreate a 2D game in 3D).
Dreamcast: Too small of a technological jump. Wasn't very much better than the PSX (just compare Air Force Delta to Ace Combat 3 or any racing game to Gran Turismo 2). Didn't have enough games and didn't have a DVD drive. Graphical hardware is weaker than a Voodoo 3.
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...
Last I checked the Slashdot forums are positively overflowing with well researched comments posted by informed individuals, and hasty remarks are never modded to +4. GameCube had nothing of the sort.
The facts of the matter are:
1. Nintendo signed ArtX to design the graphics chip for GameCube circa 1998. This chip is really the heart of GameCube, just like the RCP was the heart of N64.
2. ArtX was a start-up graphics chip company formed largely from ex SGI employees -- similar to nvidia in that respect.
3. After the design was basically finished, circa 2001 ATI bought ArtX. Net result: ATI's name goes on the chip and on the GameCube; millions of people think ATI designed the chip.
4. A chip is not a board. ArtX designed the chip.
Consequently: in no useful sense is there an ATI board in GameCube.
On topic addendum: One could reasonably presume that the Graphics Processing Unit from GameCube will be used in this newly touted hardware.