The joint SEGA-SONY hardware system - Sega of America and Sony tried to team up

[Vector2013]

Okay so 3d0 1 chip was pitched to Sega in 1992 (?), but wasn't Sega going to buy the 3d0 2 and sell it as a "Saturn 2" or even real3d LM stuff for a "Saturn 2" ?

[KitsuneNight]

As I read threw this thread, something just kept coming to my mind.

Why in hell do you guys still take anything MrSega says to consideration if it just leads up to pointless arguing?

gluttons for punishment ?

[parallaxscroll]

Okay so 3d0 1 chip was pitched to Sega in 1992 (?), but wasn't Sega going to buy the 3d0 2 and sell it as a "Saturn 2" or even real3d LM stuff for a "Saturn 2" ?

Yep.

This is gonna be a long, yet incomplete post


Sega was going to use M2, maybe even in a variety of ways. Upgrade for Saturn and/or a new standalone console that would be compatible with 32-bit 3DO, Saturn and 64-Bit M2 games.

According to Sega, M2 was a good bit of technology, but they didn't think it was good enough.
Also, 3DO's Trip Hawkens was supposedly to arrogant that he wanted to become president of Sega of America.


I cannot find a scan, but the following is from the article 'Divorce absolute for Sega and M2' - Next Generation June 1996

although Sega technicians were reportedly impressed with M2, they were not sufficiently awestuck to warrant its immediate implementation into their plans.

Matsushita / Panasonic were in 1996-97 trying to hype M2 as being as capable as the Model 3 board. However developers found M2 to be around 2 to 3 times more powerful than Nintendo 64.

http://imageshack.us/a/img262/1881/n...rmyth02eg4.jpg

According to Purvey it's more powerful than any other consumer level product he's seen including PC accelerators. And this view is echoed by those who have experimented with the console's hardware. However, until Matsushita reveals its own work on the system there exists a disparity between what Matsushita itself claims the console is capable of (Model 3 levels of performance) and the rather less spirited comparisons from third parties of two to three times Nintendo 64's polygon horsepower.

As for Sega and Lockheed Martin's Real3D, there were discussions between them, but no silicon was actually developed.


Inside Sega of Japan management in 1994, there was some panic before Saturn even launched there. Apparently some of them wanted to scrap Saturn altogether, and have Lockheed Martin build a better system.

The Dreamcast Story

''A do-or-die machine which will decide whether Sega stays in the
hardware biz''

Dreamcast is a system born out of Sega's darkest hour, a do-or-die
machine which will decide whether the company stays in the hardware
business. Its precursor, the 32bit Sega Saturn, had been widely
expected to conquer the world with Nintendo's own second next
generation system heavily delayed -- due to the collapse of an
alliance with Sony -- and neither Atari nor 3DO seriously threatening
mass market success.
All that changed with the November '93 announcement of the Sony
PlayStation, a system which would heavily defeat Sega's system and
become a considerable influence on how Sega designed Dreamcast.
Although there had been rumours of Sony producing a console, what came
as a heavy shock to Sega was the technical superiority of the
PlayStation. While the Saturn had been designed as perhaps the
ultimate 2D arcade machine, albeit with a substantial 3D capability,
PlayStation was totally committed to polygons.

Sega boss Hayao Nakayama angrily berated Sega's engineers for their
failings, but it was too late to totally redesign the system if the
1994 launch was too proceed. Instead, Sega added yet another processor
to an already over-complicated design. In terms of raw power, the new
Saturn was much more of a match for PlayStation, but it would never be
an easy machine to program for. The twin CPU design in particular
demanded highly specialised machine code rather than the C most
Japanese developers prefered: barely a year after Saturn's launch a
key Sega manager admitted only one in a hundred programmers would have
the skill to use the machine's full potential.

Ironically, the Saturn's Japanese launch would be Sega's best ever
performance in its home territory. Even a flawed version of Virtua
Fighting was enough to transform the company's traditional weakness in
its home territory. Overseas, however, it was to be a different
matter. Scepticism about the prospects of a CD-ROM machine succeeding
in the cost-sensitive US market meant Saturn was originally partnered
with a low-cost, cart-based system codenamed Jupiter -- principally
due to American scepticism that a CD-ROM machine could be
competitively priced. When Saturn was upgraded, Jupiter got axed in
favour of Mars, an upgrade for Sega's 16bit Mega Drive which was
supposed to protect the company's hugely lucrative US market. In fact,
32X was an unmitigated disaster, drawing vital developer support away
from Saturn and destroying the company's reputation among gamers who
found themselves with an add-on with barely a handful of games.

The Saturn debacle would cost the jobs of Sega's American and Japanese
bosses, beside reducing its US empire to a ruin running up losses of
$167 million in 1997. For any replacement machine the lessons were
clear: a single format, complete user-friendliness for developers and
a new brand -- so low had sunk the once mighty Sega name.


As soon as any console is launched, work is usually underway on a
replacement but the Saturn's troubles gave this process an unusual
urgency for Sega. By 1995, rumours surfaced that US defence
contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. were already deep into the
development of a replacement, possibly even with a view to releasing
it as a Saturn upgrade. There were even claims that during Saturn's
pre-launch panic a group of managers argued the machine should simply
be scrapped in favour of an all-new LMC design.

Sega originally entered into partnership with LMC to solve problems
with its Model 2 coin-op board, however by 1995 the relationship had
soured somewhat with the Model 3 board suffering massive delays.
Around the same time, 3DO began shopping around its 64bit M2 system.
According to informed sources, Sega's Japanese bankers had brokered an
unwritten deal whereby Matsushita would manufacture M2 units, while
Sega would concentrate on the software. M2 devkits were supplied to
Sega in early 1996, with initial work reputedly concentrating on a
Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for M2's launch.

Sega's M2 project soon fell apart however. 3DO's Trip Hawkins blamed
corporate ‘egos' for the collapse, while Sega insisted its engineers
were unconvinced M2 was the breakthrough technology they needed.
Instead, the company was increasingly preoccupied by the PC market --
unlike Nintendo, it was fully prepared to convert its games onto the
format and in mid-1995 it had entered into a partnership with PC
graphics card manufacturer nVidia. Under the terms of the deal, Sega
would supply ports of key Saturn titles exclusively for the nVidia PC
graphics card. At the time, pundits wondered if Sega might be
switching from Saturn to nVidia as its principal platform.

By 1996, this speculation was ebbing away as two clear frontrunners
emerged in the PC graphics market: VideoLogic's PowerVR and 3Dfx's
Voodoo chipsets. Sega approached both companies to be partners in two
parallel Saturn 2 projects, each of which having minimal if any
knowledge of the other. The 3Dfx-Sega of America project was codenamed
Black Belt, while the VideoLogic-Sega of Japan system was known as
Dural. Although console development is usually shrouded in total
secrecy, Saturn 2's development coincided with the rise of the
Internet and Black Belt soon became a popular topic of gossip. For a
time, many presumed Black Belt was the only new Sega system.

All this changed on July 22nd, 1997, when 3Dfx was informed them Black
Belt was cancelled. It was a shattering blow -- "Our contract with
Sega was considered to be gospel right up until we received the call,"
admitted marketing manager Chris Kramer. Two months later, 3Dfx issued
a lawsuit against Sega while blaming VideoLogic's Japanese backers,
NEC, for bringing influence to bear on a decision which would
otherwise have gone to 3Dfx. An initial burst of publicity soon gave
way to highly confidential discussions which settled the lawsuit away
from the public eye in August 1998.

For outsiders, 3Dfx had always been the favoured partner due to their
leadership in the PC market, moreover Sega let it be known the
decision to cancel wasn't due to either performance or cost reasons.
What may have been a factor is 3Dfx's very strength made it a
difficult partner for Sega, VideoLogic's second-place status obviously
made it the hungrier partner. Moreover, whereas 3Dfx see themselves as
creating a new gaming platform around their Voodoo hardware and Glide
software, VideoLogic were much more eager to use Microsoft's Direct3D
API.

Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the PowerVR decision
further dampened excitement about a machine soon to be redubbed
Katana. In January '98, UK trade newspaper CTW ran a savage onslaught
upon the new format: "When one looks at a format owner that actually
struggles to garner interest in its latest hardware announcements, you
know it''s in trouble. From Black Belt to Dural and Katana,
journalists have leapt into headline mode, but the level of
disinterest elsewhere is palpable." Commenting upon the latest
redundancies in America and Britain, Dinsey wondered whether the
company was "giving up and trying to re-invent itself as a PC
publisher."

In May, Sega gave its response with the official announcement of its
new system, its specifications and that controversial name: Dreamcast.
The marketing campaign began with the announcement of the marketing
campaign and its $100 million budget for each territory: America,
Europe and Japan. Sega boss Shoichiro Irimajiri put the cost of
hardware development at $50-80 million, software development at
$150-200 million, which with marketing added up to half a billion
dollars.

The PR statements were suitably bullish: "Dreamcast is Sega's bridge
to world-wide market leadership for the 21st century" commented Sega
US VP Bernie Stolar. "I am confident that Dreamcast will become a de
facto standard for digital entertainment" claimed Sega chairman Isso
Okawa. However, it was at E3 itself that the tide really began to turn
for Sega with bravura software demos finally earning the machine
journalists' respect. Post E3 reports were full of adoration , as
impressed by the restoration of Sega's old self-confidence as the raw
processing power on show. Dreamcast's launch date was set as November
20th and this time all Sony can threaten is the announcement of new
hardware -- 1998 is Dreamcast's alone.

From E3 onwards, Sega orchestrated a careful drumbeat of
announcements, including the launch of the VMS unit on July 11th to
tie-in with the Godzilla movie and a much hyped August 22nd PR event
for Sega's old mascot in Sonic Adventure. In September, Sega ran an ad
showing MD Eiichi Yukawa being abused by members of the public who
preferred Sony -- and promising all would change with Dreamcast's
arrival. And so it is, everything now rests with the machine and its
software.

sorry no working link. The above was published on Totalgames.net


Saturn did of course launch, but the idea of a LM Real3D-based Saturn 2 was revisited in 1995. According to EDGE / Next Generation, Sega gave Lockheed the go-ahead to work on Saturn 2. Yu Suzuki wanted Lockheed to handle the entire project, but SoJ management decided Lockheed should only do the graphics portion of the new system because of delays with the Model 3 board.

Saturn 2 could've been a new standalone console, or an upgrade to the existing Saturn, saving cost by using Saturn's CD-ROM drive, controller inputs and power supply. This could've been the the so-called "Eclipse",
the famous "Saturn 3D upgrade cartridge".


Next Generation magazine - November 1995






In 1997, Next Generation Online interviewed Lockheed Martin / Real3D about why Black Belt (the U.S. prototype of Dreamcast) would NOT be using LM Real3D techology.


http://web.archive.org/web/199706051.../042997b.chtml

Black Belt from a Lockheed Perspective

Two former Lockheed Martin employees, N-Space's Erick D. and Dan O'Leary voice their views on Sega's move to use 3Dfx instead of a Lockheed Martin solution.

April 29, 1997

With experience in developing for Model 2 (Desert Tank) and having helped develop the Model 3 hardware while at Lockheed Martin, Erick D. and Dan O'Leary have indicated that it would have been difficult for Sega to make a better decision in terms of a graphics subsystem.

"3Dfx has proven itself. Just look downstairs (at CGDC). Nearly every major demo at every booth is running off of some form of the Voodoo graphics chipset," said O'Leary. While consumers have yet to establish a standard in 3D acceleration, most of the developers projects and demos were using Voodoo as their target platform.

Commenting upon the strengths of the proposed Black Belt . said: "Not only is Sega getting the hottest chipset around, but with Microsoft in its corner it will be getting useful libraries; something the Saturn desperately lacked."

The major question facing the duo was why did Sega neglect its long-term hardware partner Lockheed Martin when designing the hardware? O'Leary stepped up to the plate answering: "Sega has to find the cheapest but most powerful hardware it can. Lockheed Martin is still trying to figure out how it fits into the consumer space seeing as it has traditionally worked in the simulation arena. 3Dfx on the other hand was created from the ground up to be a consumer level product. It isn't at all surprising that Sega has gone this route."

When comparing Lockheed's Model 2 and Model 3 hardware to the proposed Black Belt specification, both O'Leary and Erick D. felt that that Black Belt would be far more similar to developing for the Model 2 than Model 3. "The Model 2 is a beautiful board that is simple to get right to the metal, " said Erick D. "The Model 3 was designed around more of a traditional simulator model with a host and GPU arrangement where the database runs the entire game."

While Erick D. mentions getting to the metal easily, some developers such as Scott Corley and Dave Perry both voiced some concern over Microsoft's OS getting in the way. "Good developers will cut through the OS to get to the metal as they need it." says Erick D. "As long as Microsoft doesn't force the OS upon the developers it should be fine."

With the ease of development that is expected to go along with the system, and the double-edged sword that this situation can present, Erick D. said that Sega's quality assurance program should help to weed out games from developers that are relying too much upon the base libraries or that are quick ports of substandard PC titles.

Both Erick D. and O'Leary also pointed to one non-technical element that is different at Sega presently than it was at the launch of the Saturn: executive personnel. Both men cited the fact that Bernie Stollar was a major factor for the third party support that PlayStation enjoys and the fact that Stollar is now responsible for generating that same third party support for Sega. "They've assembled a really good team at Sega now and it's going to be interesting to see what the next generation brings." said Erick D.

[Vector2013]

Great post parallaxscroll , thanks.

[parallaxscroll]

No problemo'

[stu]

Yep.

This is gonna be a long, yet incomplete post


Sega was going to use M2, maybe even in a variety of ways. Upgrade for Saturn and/or a new standalone console that would be compatible with 32-bit 3DO, Saturn and 64-Bit M2 games.

According to Sega, M2 was a good bit of technology, but they didn't think it was good enough.
Also, 3DO's Trip Hawkens was supposedly to arrogant that he wanted to become president of Sega of America.


I cannot find a scan, but the following is from the article 'Divorce absolute for Sega and M2' - Next Generation June 1996

I think you are looking for this scan.





As for Trip Hawkins I never got the impression he wanted to be just head of Sega America, in fact he was FAR more arrogant. What he was planning was a grand alliance between Sega, Phillips and Matsushita (Panasonic) all of them producing M2 consoles in order to gain a measure of revenge against Sony for stealing 3DO's thunder, however Sega and Panasonic kept fighting and Philips eventually lost interest and the alliance fell apart. For Edge Magazine's 200th issue special edition he was interviewed about 3DO and M2, its a quite enlightening interview. I've attached a scan of the part of the article dealing with Sega's involvement in M2.

[Vector2013]

I think you are looking for this scan.





As for Trip Hawkins I never got the impression he wanted to be just head of Sega America, in fact he was FAR more arrogant. What he was planning was a grand alliance between Sega, Phillips and Matsushita (Panasonic) all of them producing M2 consoles in order to gain a measure of revenge against Sony for stealing 3DO's thunder, however Sega and Panasonic kept fighting and Philips eventually lost interest and the alliance fell apart. For Edge Magazine's 200th issue special edition he was interviewed about 3DO and M2, its a quite enlightening interview. I've attached a scan of the part of the article dealing with Sega's involvement in M2.

Also a great post.

Do you think the "Saturn 2" would have made Sega even less creditable and delayed (DC) and affected DC sales perhaps ?

[parallaxscroll]

Also a great post.

Do you think the "Saturn 2" would have made Sega even less creditable and delayed (DC) and affected DC sales perhaps ?

Probably.

So here's what I think Sega should have done. Release the Saturn as it was in Japan in late 1994. In the U.S. there is NO 32X at all. SoA hangs on with the Genesis with Sega CD until 1996. In Japan, Saturn gets the upgrade in late 1996 containing a PowerPC 603 CPU, a single-chip version of the Real3D/100 technology that is fabbed on a smaller process by Intel, and mass produced, thus massively reducing cost, plus a decent amount of RAM/VRAM.

Then in the U.S. the Saturn that gets released in late 1996 already contains the upgrade built in, plus, where possible, the guts of the original portions of Saturn are simplified. So there is no "Saturn 2" in name, just a 64-bit Saturn with PPC 603, single-chip Real3D/100, their own RAM/VRAM, plus simplifed 32-Bit Saturn stuff (the SH-2s, VDP1/2, etc). U.S. price $299. It would launch with significantly upgraded Model 2 ports, wonderful new 3D console exclusives (3D Sonic, Phantasy Star). It's also ready for decent, downscaled ports of Model 3 games in 1997. Shenmue could've been realized on such hardware--Not with Dreamcast-quality visuals, but vastly better than anything 32-Bit Saturn could handle. Sega is 2nd only to Sony in 3rd party support. Nintendo gets almost nothing outside of Factor 5 and perhaps a dozen or so others. Sony still comes out on top, but *this* Saturn has a respectable showing in terms of markshark, dev-support, and it doesn't burn anyone.

Is Real3D/100 as powerful as Model 3? Not even close. However, it uses some of the same architecture and feature-set, just on a lower level. You get 750,000 textured fully-featured polygons/sec in realworld situations, therefore real games. It's far better than PS1, N64, 3Dfx Voodoo1, and even somewhat better than 3DO-Matsushita/Panasonic M2. Real3D/100 is also more powerful than Model 2.





Unfortunately, Lockheed Martin / Real3D never adapted to the consumer level. They never launched Real3D/100 at all, the only prototypes lacked the geometry processor.


Note the empty space on the upper-right where the Real3D logo is. That's where the geometry engine would've been.



Real3D's only consumer product was the i740 jointly developed with Intel, for Intel motherboard's integrated graphics and Lockheed StarFighter add-in cards, in early 1998. i740s performance was around Voodoo1 level with somewhat better image quality, at a time when Voodoo 2 /SLI was coming out. So i740 would've been a terrible choice for Dreamcast, since the far superior PowerVR2 was being customized into the even better CLX2 aka PowerVR2DC.

With that said, a single chip, shrunk, mass produced version of Real3D/100 (with geometry processor, graphics processor and texture processor all on-chip (rather than on-board) with a cheap PowerPC 603 CPU and say, around 12 MB (maybe 16 MB) of RAM/VRAM, the original 32-Bit Saturn tech from 1994, and 4-6x speed CD-ROM would've been a killer console in late 1996. Sega of America would not have been dealing with 32X and 32X CD at all. No fumbled launch of a 32-Bit Saturn anytime in 1995. Just a simple transistion from the 16-Bit market (Genesis+SegaCD) to a full fledged 64-Bit PowerPC and Real3D/100 based Saturn.

[Vector2013]

Outstanding post ^

[sheath]

Uh, I'm pretty sure the Saturn Netlink was released in 1996 and Xband came out several years before that.

[Vector2013]

Uh, I'm pretty sure the Saturn Netlink was released in 1996

That is when I bought mine yes, or 1997, but I'm not sure when it was actually released regionally. Still got mine btw.

and Xband came out several years before that.

Yes for md and snes but Netlink was a xband device too.

"The Net Link modem was an XBAND device, which had previously been used in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis modem games."

Like picture implies though, first to use your own service for internet browsing on a console, and games like bomberman were first multiplayer (like 4 or more, maybe up to 32) over a modem for a console basically. Let's say picture is off by 1 or 2 years, still pretty impressive.

[kool kitty89]

While we all know Sony and Philips made several (actually 3) attempts with Nintendo to make a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, and many of us know that Sony approached Sega to develop for the MEGA CD via Sony Imagesoft,
I've never heard of this (potential) collaboration:




Entire article here

I don't remember the mainstream press mentioning the Sony-Sega deal for PS1 hardware. Though that's probably because I didn't follow things too closely at the time.

As was touched on already, this information was uncovered by Melf's interview with Tom Kalinske back in 2006 . . . but it WAS NOT for PS1 hardware. The collaboration (as Kalinske tells it) was entirely between SoA and Sony of America (especially Imagesoft staff), with the final proposal then broached to the parent divisions of Sony and Sega of Japan (at which point Sony favored the proposal but Japan did not). It's the same interview that detailed the proposal from SGI to partner over the 3D game chipset they had in development (which Sega considered and ultimately dropped and Nintendo ended up picking up later -- Joe Miller's recent interview on Sega 16 details the technical reasons behind this . . . and it really does make sense, their concerns were right too, as Nintendo experienced the sort of development problems and delays Sega's engineers were concerned about)

This almost certainly went down some time in 1993, so before Sony or Sega of America staff had any specific details (or quite possible any real details at all) on hardware development going on back in Japan. Furthermore, no specific hardware was ever mentioned by Kalinske, things got halted before they got to that point.

Here's the article:
http://www.sega-16.com/2006/07/interview-tom-kalinske/
and here's the pertinent segment:

They had a software division run by Olaf Olafsson, who was a great partner to us. They spent lots of money developing games for the Sega CD (probably more than we did), we gave them technical help – a lot of it; we loaned them people, and there was really this wonderful collaborative effort. We each benefited from each other’s work, and I think that’s one of the things that has been forgotten in video game industry lore or history: that this very strong bond existed back then between the two companies. In fact, taking it to the next step, at one point Olaf, Mickey Schulhoff (former Sony of America CEO), and I discussed that since we had such a great relationship from working on the Sega CD, why don’t we take what we’ve learned from our software developers – their input – and use it as the criteria for what the next optical platform ought to be?

So we got all that and put it together so that it wasn’t just pure engineeringese (jargon) but something that people could understand. I remember we had a document that Olaf and Mickey took to Sony that said they’d like to develop jointly the next hardware, the next game platform, with Sega, and here’s what we think it ought to do. Sony apparently gave the green light to that. I took it to Sega of Japan and told them that this was what we thought an ideal platform would be, at least from an U.S. perspective, based on what we’ve learned from the Sega CD, and our involvement with Sony and our own people. Sega said not a chance. Why would it want to share a platform with Sony? Sega would be much better off just developing its own platform, and it’s nice that we had some ideas on what that platform ought to be and they’d consider it, but the company would be developing its next platform itself.

When you think back on that position, it’s an interesting one. We all knew we were going to lose money on the hardware, so our proposal was that each of us would sell this joint Sega/Sony hardware platform; we’ll share the loss on the hardware (whatever that is, we’ll split it), combine our advertising and marketing, but we’ll each be responsible for the software sales we’ll generate. Now, at that particular point in time, Sega knew how to develop software a hell of a lot better than Sony did. They were just coming up the learning curve, so we would have benefited much more greatly, at least in my opinion, than Sony would have, at least initially, at least for a year or two. But Sega of Japan didn’t want any of that.

So basically what happened was, during SoA and Sony Imagesoft's collaborative period on the Sega CD, they started a joint venture to define what they thought would make for an ideal next generation multimedia-capable game console (feature wise) using their software developers and engineers. Additionally, they came up with a preliminary proposal on how funding and profits would be distributed under such a collaborative venture. (Kalinske doesn't mention how 3rd party license royalties would have worked in, but it seems the initial idea was to split hardware design/manufacturing/distribution/marketing costs 50/50 and same for hardware sales revenue -so they'd split the profits and losses on hardware- while software published by Sony and Sega would be totally separate -again, no mention of 3rd parties)


And, again, at that point they broached the topic to their Japanese superiors and Sony was go but Sega was no.
TBH, speculation on how such a partnership would have turned out aside, I really wonder what impact that research had on Sony's development of the PS1 hardware and Sega's Saturn (depending what point in 1993 we're talking, there would still have been a fair margin for modification, especially on Sony's end), and this could also go for proposed software development models and such. (may have contributed to Sony building their SDK they way they did)

We just don't know any more than this though, and unfortunately Joe Miller was not asked about these events either in his recent Sega-16 interview. (my only real disappointment of that otherwise wonderful interview)

Really? All of the mainstream sites went crazy with this when it first came up. They all said that Sega turned down the real world PS1 hardware as though that was what was presented to them, and everybody laughed, poor stupid retarded Sega. Then the SGI offer came out, and all of the mainstream sites printed that as though Sega had turned on the real world N64 hardware too, and everybody laughed at the industry's idiot step cousin.

What nobody did was fact check a thing. Neither did any mainstream site realize that these offers were placed without any of the key players in the real hardware development of the PS1 and N64. Also, the Saturn is always footnoted in these articles as "just a 2D system" or "not good at all at 3D". So we in fact have two prospective offers in a sea of prospective offers and a straw man Saturn to laugh at.

Nonetheless the damage has been done. The mainstream now believes that both Sony and SGI offered "Sega the moron" ample opportunity to "repent and be saved" by vaporware. It's a great story I guess.

True, the media DID take it out of context . . . but it's not as far off as you're implying either. In fact, certain areas are totally overlooked by media with wrong assumptions, while very real potential isn't even argued (just as significant as their wrong assumptions on other potential). But I've pretty well summarized this above.

And on the SGI issue, you're wrong: IT WAS the chipset Nintendo later adopted, Joe Miller confirmed this and finally explained in detail exactly why SoJ engineers were so wary of it (indeed they predicted many of the problems Nintendo later suffered). Now, whether Sega should have taken that offer or not is still a big "if" . . . they very well may have gotten stuck at a 1996 release like Nintendo (2 years late for the Saturn's plans in Japan), but OTOH it also may have ended up implemented better than the cart-based platform with limited documentation that Nintendo released. (or you could argue that SoJ should have looked at the system design features in general and used that as input for modifying the Saturn's design . . . except depending on the exact date this all happened, the Saturn may have already been too far along to modify so heavily without excessive cost or such or maybe they already DID make changes with some of those things in mind)

Its because it lies and spin by TOM - Which I wouldn't expect any less for the man . EDGE did a massive old feature with the PS Team and Ken Kutaragi and at no stage was it offered to SEGA or any other party after Nintendo rejected their Hardware . If SEGA did know about the PS 1) it wouldn't have been shocked that SONY was about to enter the console market itself. 2) It would have known the spec's and what it would take to beat them or at least try to match them

Kalinske has been just a been blatant and utter liar that can't admit he screwed up big time with his love affair of the 32X.

I highly disagree here. I really don't see any reason to assume this is false, it's all quite reasonable from what I can see (in the original interview, not the spin subsequently put on it).
It's possible he would lie to save face (Nolan Bushnell syndrome), but I really see no evidence one way or the other here . . . which is one more reason having Joe Miller not address the topic was disappointing.

I'll easily believe there were lies and misinformation spread during Kalinske's tenure at Sega (for PR reasons among other things), and as such, it would also make perfect sense that interviews from the mid 90s would be contradicted by his post-Sega interviews where he would be far less bias and able to speak freely.

The 32X was mandated by Nakayama above the board of SOJ directly to SOA. Nakayama wanted an answer to the Jaguar and had Sato working on one but liked SOA's initial 32X suggestion better. From there Sato and SOJ worked extensively with Franz, Bayless and the rest of SOA to complete the 32X design and launch the system in 1994. It was only after that, and after the successful Japanese Saturn launch the same season, that SOJ started to turn. Bayless apparently felt that the launch of the Saturn was a breach of trust between SOJ and SOA. He reported that SOJ was very helpful in all things related to the 32X prior to that.

That is, according to all current interviews available anyway. Where was Kalinske in all of this? Promoting anything and everything Sega threw at him to the press I guess, I haven't seen his function in the organization explained beyond that.

Yes, this is about right as far as we know. SoJ broached the requirement for a new (possibly interim, lower-end at the very least) console with the intention to release it in parallel with the Saturn. (and then various things like the open forum style approach to preliminary hardware design, etc)

Some people argue SoJ never wanted to release the Saturn and 32x together, but I haven't seen any direct evidence to support this. SoJ and SoA may have had different perceptions on ideal market goals and targets for the 32x (and Saturn for that matter), but that's a different matter entirely than not wanting to produce both.

That said, assuming the whole "SOJ wanted it" thing, I do wonder if SoA management ever questioned the logic behind releasing both platforms at the same time (or close enough to that to be parallel products). Further, I wonder how much actually could have been done if SoA outright didn't want any new console short of Saturn . . . or whether they'd have considered something more like the so-called Jupiter (cheaper Saturn without onboard CD drive).

Actually, I wonder how much of a design goal the 32x project (from January 1994 inception) was to be an upgrade to the MD architecture (be it a standalone beefed up backwards compatible MD, or an expansion module) or whether the main goal was just to fill a specific lower-end/early period niche for the 5th gen game market. (in the latter case the Jupiter would have complemented the Saturn much better IMO)


And in any case, there was on single mistake or event that really screwed Sega alone . . . it was a culmination of mistakes and unfortunate circumstances (including arcade/amusement market decline in Japan) layered on top of eachother from 1994-1998 that ruined the Saturn (and 32x, and GG, and screwed up late gen MD and CD to some extent), and yet more that hurt the DC.
Many of those "mistakes" weren't even mistakes on their own, but became such in combination with other actions taken. (like how the 32x went from an OK -still not great IMO- product design in 1994 to a mess in 1995 due to the way marketing and other resources were shifted to the Saturn, the stupid early launch, premature discontinuation of the 32x, etc, etc)

Here again, the Saturn had no dearth of software early on. More games would have just gotten lost in the mainstream mix, like High Velocity did already. It is interesting that the Genesis and Sega CD were only canceled in Japan by 1996, but that effectively killed them here as well as the 32X.

There were SOME holes in the software though, like lacking some expected staple franchises (like Sonic) and a strong Sports game lineup. (remember, in 1994 Sega Sports rivaled EA as the biggest Sports game brand on the planet, and a weak early showing hurt Sega big time there -lacking not just in 1995, but in the far more critical 1996 market as well, and especially in the ever key-to-the-US-market sports genre: American Football)

Marketing and general PR issues were overall a bigger problem though. (and that includes the results of crappy 32x management in 1995 and the weird Saturn launch)

[kool kitty89]

You can also (kinda) add the original 3DO chipset to that list. According to "The Ultimate History of Video Games" by Steven L Kent, Michael Katz (former CEO of Sega of America) is quoted on page 484 as saying that RJ Mical and Dave Needle presented him with the concept of paying them $2 million and giving them 2 years to develop the next "ulitmate revolutionary" video game system, according to Katz he was all for it and was ready to pay them the money, however he had to agree any deal with Sega of Japan and according to Katz the SOJ management turned them down when they presented their ideas to them. Interesting stuff.

Well if it turned out essentially the same chip that the Mical/Needle team turned out for 3DO ready for a 1993 launch then I would agree. However since Sega would likely of had the chipset in development for an additional year and probably with a different and possibly better CPU I wonder if it would of helped Sega out vs the Playstation (a more integrated chipset design and possibly a more streamlined development system?) Who knows? Like I said though a lot of interesting stuff.

Well, I don't totally agree here. Assuming Kent's information is right (which it's often not -though direct quotes are pretty accurate accounts of statements made -not fact-checked, but accurate as far as said interview) then this would imply that the design team later picked up by Trip Hawkins came to Sega probably some time in 1990 (during Katz's tenure).

So this is very early on, before Sega started Saturn development and before the Sega CD was complete, which makes for LOTS of possibilities. Aside from possible differences to the core chipset, there could have been differing design configurations with external hardware (RAM, CPU, etc), so even with the existing chipset it might have been more powerful. The 3DO's cel engine is nearly as fast as the Saturn's VDP1 at 2D and 3D, with some better features even -alpha blending, shading, and texture color depth and even texture compression, but the problem is it's heavily bottlenecked by sharing the CPU bus for texture data (likewise bottlenecking the CPU). Add a dedicated block of RAM for textures separate from CPU work RAM, and you're good. (better still with a faster CPU)

Additionally, compared to Saturn, the machine could have been on the market a year earlier, so pretty significant there in general. (though that would mean the SH2 wouldn't be an option . . . though SH1 would -still better than the ARM60 the 3DO got) And if they DID extend development to target 1994, that could have mean a more advanced design than 3DO ended up with and likely targeting the .8 micron chip technology the Saturn used vs the older 1 micron tech the 3DO used. (which would be faster and cheaper -smaller die size) Sega's Hitachi connection very well may have led to the design being optimized around their SDRAM chips rather than VRAM as in the 3DO (with cheap commodity FPM DRAM still used where appropriate), so that could have helped things too.
If VDP1 is any indication (or the Jaguar chipset, among other things), running on .8 micron tech should have comfortable allowed double the clock speed of the 3DO's Cel engine (GPU), which would mean nearly double the fillrate of the Saturn's VDP1 and a solid lead over the PSX as well. (for games optimized around quads, of course)

Sega's normal console style business model would have led to FAR lower prices than what 3DO ended up with in 1993/94, so keep that in mind too. (also, being somewhat simpler than the Saturn design, it would have been more straightforward to optimize programming for -and learn in general- and very likely been a fair bit cheaper to manufacture than the Saturn) On top of that, using that model would have avoided the "closed box" API-only programming interface of the 3DO which prevented optimizing the hardware at low level (something very important up to the Dreamcast era), so there'd be a performance boost there too.

Even with a 1993 3DO style chipset (probably with fewer bottlenecks), it would have been a good enough machine for the early part of the 5th generation, and the earlier release would have made an early 6th gen entry natural as well, or, rather, make the Dreamcast's release date right on time. (the typical 5 year sweet spot for console succession if you go from 1993 to 1998 -JP release) In this case, a Japan 1993 an US 1994 launch would have been likely, and worked out much better than the 3DO. (Japan being better for high-end niche releases and the US launch having the advantage of that year to build up software, reduce manufacturing costs, etc)

Finally, the 3DO is actually technically similar in quite a few areas to the existing Saturn (especially VDP1), and the reasonably conservative design goals and timeline should have addressed all the complaints later leveled against SGI's chip, so it really would have made tons of sense for Sega to do that. (I think this is now one of my favorite Sega hypotheticals )

[sheath]

So we are suggesting that Sega of Japan should have gone with the designers of the 3DO, but not the 3DO design itself, and then combined that with the best aspects of the Saturn? That sounds like more than a few removals from historical reality. I don't like the idea of Sega of Japan being asked to partner with designers they had never worked with before and had no existing relationship with. Especially with Sega of Japan leaning heavily on Yu Suzuki himself for the development and "consumerization" of the Model 1 and Model 2 I'm not sure they needed to outsource for hardware designs in the mid 90s.

Also, with the Dreamcast the Hitachi plus NEC combo made a lot of sense especially because Direct X, Open GL and PC graphics cards in general had reached such a state that they would naturally be considered when designing a console anyway. With the 3DO and Saturn no such situation existed with off the shelf consumer grade GPUs being so easily benchmarked. I don't see how 3DO or Saturn could have been released in 1993 for anything less than what the Panasonic 3DO went for, weak CPU included. I'm also not sure the 3DO's fillrate or 2D capabilities are anywhere near the real world Saturn's. I would guess the 3DO stacks up at half as capable at best, or one quarter as capable as the Saturn in any given area at worst. The Saturn would have been the same if it was in fact designed and released in 1993.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

That is when I bought mine yes, or 1997, but I'm not sure when it was actually released regionally. Still got mine btw.



Yes for md and snes but Netlink was a xband device too.

"The Net Link modem was an XBAND device, which had previously been used in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis modem games."

Like picture implies though, first to use your own service for internet browsing on a console, and games like bomberman were first multiplayer (like 4 or more, maybe up to 32) over a modem for a console basically. Let's say picture is off by 1 or 2 years, still pretty impressive.

Saturn Netlink games don't work in the way you ware thinking. You essentially just dial someones phone number and make a direct connection over the phone. Bomberman allowed for 4 players but there's a catch. It's 2 people on one console and 2 people on the other connected over a phone call.

While there is an Internet connection involved, it's only used for web browsing and accessing the Net Link Zone IRC channel.