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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.
END COMMUNICATION
"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
... is this the triforce of power, courage, or wisdom?!?!?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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.
Wouldn't the most buzzword compliant name be ForceXP at the moment?
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?
On the other hand, the speed of Sonic with the fire-throwing power of Mario would probably do us all some good . . .
I doubt it...
Haven't you seen the anandtech piece on it? The thing is t-i-n-y...
here's a site where they actually crack one open.
maybe they'll offer it in other revisions (like how the N64 had that expansion port), but I doubt it... I'm sure the new board they're working on won't be compatible with the rest of the GC hardware... but we could get lucky...
Silly hacker TRIXP are for script kiddies...
Sorry I had to....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
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 agree with the sega statement - but nintendo is no where near as popular in the states as it is in japan. not to mention the old nintendo-gameboy-pocketgameboy have way more "toys" to attach to them. as in the camera for the gameboy that came out here a couple years back was one of the first things to be released in japan right after they released the gameboy. its more nintendos lack of "zeal" for spreading into america - then nintendo actually lacking good ideas. granted sony has definately come up big time - but my analagy would be ATI and Nvidia - granted Nvidia is more popular, but ATI has alot of cool and useful stuff that brings in the money too. and i think the main reason why nintendo lost so much hold on the states in the past few years is linked to them giving up there squaresoft license to sony and relying on zelda and mario rehashed over and over.
Ave Molech Setting
The board "flipper" was actually developed by a company called ArtX, which has since been aquired by ATI.
I think Dr Peter Venkman said it best: "... dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!"
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
iForceXP.NET
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
Nintendo sold at least _one_ console because of Zelda 64 (the greatest game ever). Mine. Bet I'm not the only one. ;)
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.
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in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
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
Possibly, though if I understand trademark law correctly, it's a problem when two companies in the same business use a similiar name. Nvidia could argue that they had the *force name in graphics hardware first, and Nintendo's "Triforce" trademark only counts in video games.
:)
I hope it doesn't come to a lawsuit. Triforce is a damn cool name. It'd be cool if Nintendo/Sega could arrange the look of the chips to resemble a gold triangle on the hardware, too.
And honestly, most of the Zelda series is better than FF7 or FF8 in my opinion. Even though FF7 and Resident Evil were basically the "killer apps" for the PS1, Zelda 64 was a more enjoyable game.
What irks me is that people complain about Nintendo's tendancy to release lots of Mario and Zelda games. Then they go and rave about how
the newest Resident Evil, Metal Gear, or Tekken is so great for Sony's console.
Which isn't to say that these games AREN'T great.
I've got a PS2 and a Game Cube, and I enjoy games
on both systems.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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
Nvidia is dropping the Geforce name after the Geforce4. Depending when this new card is finally on selves, Nvidia will probably have a new family name.
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.
END COMMUNICATION
Nintendo does far better in the US than in Japan. The N64 didn't sell well at all in Japan, but it made them a lot of money here (last I remember hearing the PS only outsold the N64 3:2, tho that might've changed towards the end of the N64's life).
I wouldn't say Mario and Zelda were just rehashes. Mario 64 was really different than the previous ones. Majora's Mask, while it shared the same engine and a lot of the graphics of Ocarina of Time, definately played very differently due to the 3 day time limit restrictions.
The Zelda and Mario games sold really well. They certainly didn't hurt Nintendo at all. If anything is rehashed over and over, I'd say Square's stuff is. If you're not really into RPGs, then the vast majority of them look identical (and really really boring).
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?
The Triforce 3D Rendering Engine: Because if you don't have the Triforce, then GAME OVER RETURN OF GANON
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
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
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
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.
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.
I don't think that's a problem at all. Skies of Arcadia used standard DC polygons for it's sequences, and the game still looked terrific. In fact, I'm a bigger fan of the GameCube because it has less space for FMV. Game companies just go nuts with all of those sequences and tend to forget that the user actually expects to play a game. If I wanted all of that, I'd just go to a theatre. It makes sense to keep the developers on a leash so they don't go overboard.
I was never upset by the performance of my NES due to it's lack of FMV. In fact, it was the most entertaining console I ever owned. I think that's proof right there that you don't need FMV to have a good game system.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
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.
Some Naomi arcade games could use the Dreamcast VMS/VMU for storage. Similarly, NeoGeo arcade and home systems used the same memory card.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
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."