FGNOnline FAST GAME NEWS ONLINE Home About Contact Forums Guestbook Members Arcade Links Home 02/20/10 SEGA Republic at The Dubai Mall sets new benchmark Mena Report Mr Zachary Morris 02/18/10 Newly Launched Skilled Gaming Site Deploys Quova's IP Geolocation to Restrict Illegal Bettors QUOVA Mr Zachary Morris 02/17/10 SEGA developing SEGA Vision 2 We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SEGA is currently developing the successor to the 2008 SEGA Vision PMP. Features which were lacking in the initial model such as, digital TV Tuner, touch screen, telephony and gaming shall be as standard in the next model. SEGA has cut deals with british semiconductor companies ARM and Imagination Technologies to provide the central processor and the graphics processor for the device. The Vision 2 shall hit store shelves by holiday season 2010. Mr Zachary Morris 02/12/10 SEGA Games Limited to Utilise 192business.com in their New Online Gambling Website NewswireToday Mr Zachary Morris 02/05/10 SEGA SAMMY releases financials SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS Mr Zachary Morris 02/02/10 Further information on the upcoming MODEL 4 arcade board. Following on from our previous updates on this story we can now officially reveal for the very first time that both Hiroshi Yagi and Yu Suzuki of SEGA's Amusement R&D Division are spearheading the development of the revolutionary MODEL 4 system. Both Suzuki-san and Yagi-san were transferred from their previous roles within the organisation to their current positions last spring. Mr Zachary Morris 02/02/10 SEGA covers all angles InterGame Online Mr Zachary Morris 02/01/10 Anna Downing joins SEGA MCV Mr Zachary Morris 01/29/10 Follow-up to yesterday's exclusive report Yesterday we published a news story about the future of SEGA's MODEL series of arcade boards. Today we would like to follow up on how this will impact SEGA's consumer business. We asked our source in Japan whether SEGA shall be getting back into consoles ever again and he told us that SEGA shall remain a third party publisher for the remainder of this generation and also the entirety of the next generation. However half way through the next console cycle SEGA shall evaluate the financial feasibilty of shrinking either the MODEL 4 or MODEL 5 into a sub $500 consumer game box. If possible then SEGA shall return back to the business it once was the undisputed worldwide leader in. The date of launch for the new system would be anywhere between 2017-2019. Mr Zachary Morris 01/29/10 SEGA Games Limited Announces the Launch of SEGA Partners (An Integrated Affilliate Program for its Online Gaming Brand) PR Newswire Mr Zachary Morris 01/28/10 NEOVIA Announces Agreements With Online Gaming Giant SEGA Games Limited NEOVIA Financial Mr Zachary Morris 01/28/10 Exclusive Report: Further details on the future of SEGA's MODEL series. Last year we exclusively revealed SEGA's plans for the MODEL 4 arcade board. Today we can reveal some further details. Previously we reported on SEGA's partners for the MODEL 4 project, however today we can officially announce that the source that provided the previous piece of data may have been incorrect. Thus the providers of the central processor and video hardware are as of this time unknown. Regarding software, according to our sources within SEGA of America, SEGA has one title up and running on the ray tracing based system. The source alludes that the title has a quote "Time Burtonesque look" However when pressed on exactly what this means the source refused to elaborate. The game shall be a launch title and the showcase title for the new system scheduled for a 2011/2012 worldwide amusement center release. We also learnt that the main chipset for the machine excluding the cost of the cabinet shall cost $1000-$2000 per board. Inline with previous MODEL boards. Regarding SEGA's plans beyond the MODEL 4, another source this time from SEGA of Japan tells us that SEGA also have plans for a MODEL 5. Whilst MODEL 4 is designed for fast real-time Ray Tracing, MODEL 5's premise is based around fast real-time Photon Mapping based Global Illumination. Our source was not willing to put an exact date on MODEL's 5 introduction date citing 2015 as a guessestimate. As SEGA also has a third party consumer publishing business, our source was also able to reveal to us that both the PlayStation 4 and the XBox 3 specifications are close to being locked and that both systems shall be yet another round of rasterization, containing no special circuitry for ray tracing or global illumination. This is to be expected as such technology is impossible for a sub $400 game box for 2012, the expected year of launch for both systems. What this means for SEGA is that it's arcade business shall now enjoy a clear one generation lead on the home market. A console's life before being replaced by it's successor is usually 6 or 7 years, meaning the world's amusement business shall now have something which won't be found in the home until 2018 or 2019, as PlayStation 5 and XBox 4 shall most definitely be based around Ray Tracing and Global Illumination circuitry. FGNOnline shall continue updating on this story as and when it becomes available. MODEL BOARD HISTORY AND FUTURE : MODEL 1 - RASTERIZATION (1992) MODEL 2 - RASTERIZATION (1994) MODEL 3 - RASTERIZATION (1996) MODEL 4 - RAY TRACING (2011/2012) MODEL 5 - PHOTON MAPPING (2015?) Mr Zachary Morris 01/24/10 SPECIAL REPORT: SEGA BlackBelt vs SEGA Katana/Dreamcast in depth comparison Today we would like to present an in depth comparison of the processors of the SEGA of America designed BlackBelt and the SEGA of Japan designed Katana/Dreamcast. CPU IBM/Motorola 604e (SEGA BlackBelt) Hitachi SH-4 (SEGA Katana/Dreamcast) Execution out-of-order in-order Superscalar 4 issue 2 issue General Purpose Registers 32 x 32-bit 16 x 32-bit Floating point registers 32 x 64-bit 32 X 32-bit On-chip cache 32KB instruction 32KB data 8KB instruction 16KB data Transistors 5.6 million 3.2 million GPU 3Dfx VSA-100 (SEGA BlackBelt) NEC/VideoLogic PowerVR Series 2 (SEGA Katana/Dreamcast) Core frequency 166MHz 100MHz Fillrate 333 Megapixels 333 Megatexels 200 Megapixels (scene depth complexity of x2) No Multi-Texturing Polygons/sec 11 Million 7 Million Color rendering 32-bit 32-bit Texture size 2048x2048 1024x1024 FSAA Rotated-grid super-sampling Ordered-grid over-sampling Texture Compression FXT1 8:1 Compression VQTC 5:1 Compression Transistors 14 Million 10 Million Mr Zachary Morris 01/23/10 SPECIAL REPORT: SEGA Dural vs SEGA BlackBelt Recently, we here at FGNOnline uncovered secret documents detailing the hardware prototypes which lead to the much loved SEGA Dreamcast games console. Here we shall be detailing for the very first time actual concrete specifications of the mysterious "BlackBelt" & "Dural" systems. So, without further ado� SEGA BlackBelt Tatsuo Yamamoto, Sega of America CPU: IBM/Motorola PowerPC 604e GPU: 3Dfx VSA-100 Audio: Yamaha Processor + ARM7 Main RAM: 32MB Video RAM: 8MB Sub-Caching Memory: 4MB Sound RAM: 2MB Drive: 2X DVD Connectivity: N/A API - 3Dfx Glide SEGA Dural Hideki Sato, Sega of Japan CPU: Hitachi SH-4, 200Mhz GPU: Twin NEC/VideoLogic PowerVR Series 2 Audio: Yamaha Processor + ARM7 Main RAM: 32MB Video RAM: 16MB Sound RAM: 2MB Drive: 16X GD-ROM Connectivity: 56.6K Modem APIs: SEGA custom & Microsoft Direct3D For monetary reasons, SEGA of Japan chose the Dural design. Furthermore, because of SEGA's worsening financial position at the time, the company cut down the specs of the Dural and the final design was named Katana, later officially being christened Dreamcast. SEGA Katana (Dreamcast) Hideki Sato, Sega of Japan CPU: Hitachi SH-4 200mhz GPU: Single NEC/VideoLogic Power VR Series 2 Audio: Yamaha Processor + ARM7 Main RAM: 16MB Video RAM: 8MB Sound RAM: 2MB Drive: 12X GD-ROM Connectivity: 56.6K Modem APIs: SEGA custom & Microsoft Direct3D So there you have it, the 13 year mysteries have finally been uncovered. But what do you think? Would SEGA have fared any better if they had chosen Dural or BlackBelt? or was their fate already sealed regardless of their chosen hardware? Please do let us know in the Guestbook or Forums. Mr Zachary Morris 01/22/10 Sonic hits Alton Towers MCV Mr Zachary Morris 01/18/10 SEGA Games Limited Introduces Real Money, Online Poker and Casino Website PR Newswire Mr Zachary Morris 01/15/10 Factory spins Sonic deal Licensing.biz Mr Zachary Morris 01/14/10 SEGA's Aliens Vs Predator marketing plans laid bare "There will be a three-week TV campaign with ads appearing across a range of terrestrial and satellite channels, including a dedicated promotional weekend supported by Aliens vs Predator. A two-month cinema campaign will see 30-second ads shown before leading blockbuster movies. Online ads will target specialist and lifestyle websites, with high impact site takeovers and launch zones arranged for key destinations. This will take a dual-phase approach, first promoting the demo and then the game's release. A broad print campaign will see both ads and editorial appear in a range of specialist and lifestyle publications. This has been supported by an intensive 12-month PR campaign, which has secured eight front covers for the game." MCV Mr Zachary Morris 01/14/10 Sam Furukawa speaks Kotaku Mr Zachary Morris 01/14/10 Playtech Announces Licensing Agreement With SEGA Games Limited Operators of www.SEGACasino.com and www.SEGAPoker.com PR Newswire Mr Zachary Morris 01/14/10 Gaming industry giant SEGA initiate cooperation with CTXM CTXM Mr Zachary Morris 01/13/10 Mark Cerny To Be Inducted Into Hall of Fame of The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences "In 1985 Cerny joined Sega, relocating to its Tokyo offices and transitioning from arcade games to cartridge-based games for home systems. At the time, he spoke no Japanese, however he quickly became proficient in the language. In addition to creating conventional games such as Shooting Gallery for the Sega Master System, Cerny worked in the extreme high-tech end of the 1980's console business, setting up a line of 3-D games using active shutter glasses, and an online games network � both projects ahead of their time. After three years in Tokyo he returned to the US, where he founded and managed the Sega Technical Institute and oversaw the development of Sonic the Hedgehog 2." PR Newswire Mr Zachary Morris 01/12/10 Bayonetta storms single format charts MCV Mr Zachary Morris 01/12/10 John Clark on better dialogue with consumers MCV Mr Zachary Morris 01/12/10 SEGA wins Fantasy Entertainment deal InterGame Online Mr Zachary Morris 01/11/10 SEGA: Nintendo Should Support Mature Gamers Gamekult Mr Zachary Morris 01/04/10 Constantine Hantzopoulos speaks "The interesting thing is Nintendo, they make money off of every console they sell. I think one of the big things that we found out is it really is a mass market product where mom or whoever goes out, the 80% of the people out there who go out and buy a Wii box are happy with Wii Sports and they don’t really need another game. Or if they do need another game, they’ll buy Wii Resort because it comes with a free Wiimote or Wii Play…So, honestly I don’t know…You can obviously see that profits are down for Nintendo. I think the Wii is on its tail slide, unless they drop the price to like 80 bucks then you’ll start seeing it flying off the shelves. And I believe they’ll still make money if they drop it to 80 bucks…Point being is they have the ability to lower the price on the Wii [...] where Sony and Microsoft cannot do that.� 4 Guys 1UP Podcast Mr Zachary Morris 01/03/10 SEGA files new trademarks L.A.Machineguns Gunblade NY United States Patent and Trademark Office Mr Zachary Morris 12/16/09 F5 Helps SEGA Reduce Data Management Costs by 66% with ARX File Virtualization Solution Business Wire Mr Zachary Morris 12/15/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: World exclusive first details on the next generation Wii We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that Nintendo has chosen the chipset that shall power it's next generation Wii games console. The processor of choice is AMD's forthcoming Fusion APU (Accelerated Processing Unit). Cost effectiveness was the primary motivator for Nintendo's final decision. The Fusion processor integrates both the CPU and GPU onto a single die, greatly reducing cost of manufacturing for Nintendo. What is not known at this particular time is whether Nintendo has signed for the first generation or the second generation implementation of the architecture, however as a 2011 holiday season release for the platform has been set in stone, the former seems to be the more likely scenario. Interestingly Nintendo has chosen AMD's rival nVidia for the next generation DS, using a member of the company's Tegra family and scheduled for worldwide release holiday season 2010. Mr Zachary Morris 12/8/09 NKOK adds rights for Sega characters Playthings Mr Zachary Morris 11/30/09 First details on the PowerVR Series 6 "It's equipped with Imagination's PowerVR SGX2 graphics engine capable of supporting WXGA+ displays" Fudzilla Mr Zachary Morris 11/25/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Sony has chosen the CPU for the next generation PlayStation. We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SCEI has officially chosen IBM's currently in development POWER7 architecture for it's PlayStation 4 system, currently scheduled for a 2012 worldwide release. IBM shall debut POWER7 for the server market in the summer of 2010. The PlayStation 4 shall use a cost effective version of the architecture custom designed for Sony's specific needs. The only information FGNOnline currently has available regarding specifications and performance is that the PS4 implementation of the chip shall use 6-8 cores, 24-32MB shared L3 Cache, Quad threading per core, and a double precision performance approaching 200GFLOPS. The CELL chip which powers the PS3 is capable of 15 double precision GFLOPS. This would give the PS4 a performance leap of over 10 fold over it's predecessor. Interestingly, the primary reason IBM cancelled development on the CELL based PoweXcell 8i is because of SCEI's change of stance. The company wanted to move away from the exotic architecture employed for the PS3 to a more traditional architecture favored by third party developers. As displayed by it's choice of processors, the server based POWER7 and the TBDR based PowerVR 6, SCEI once again has sights set for performance leadership in the next round. Mr Zachary Morris 11/23/09 Aristocrat Launches SEGA Co-Developed Games Marketwire Mr Zachary Morris 11/16/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Sony has chosen the GPU for the next generation PlayStation. We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SCEI has officially chosen the Imagination Technologies currently in development PowerVR Series 6 architecture for it's next generation PlayStation console scheduled for 2012 worldwide deployment. The PlayStation 4 shall use a high end variant of the Series 6 line. Performance, specifications and features are at this time unknown. The Series 6 shall receive an official announcement from IMGTEC sometime in 2010, with initial models targeting the smartphone and netbook sector. It is believed that Sony has gained exclusive rights to the technology for the console space. IMGTEC's PowerVR technology uses an advance technique called TBDR which can outperform a competing IMR product from nVidia/ATi by 3-5 fold whilst maintaining equal die size and price point. TBDR was the primary reason the SEGA DreamCast was capable of such astonishing graphical feats as early as 1998. Interestingly SCEI has also chosen IMGTEC as the graphics provider for their next generation PSP. That particular product shall however be using the Series 5XT. Mr Zachary Morris 11/13/09 Sega Republic installs Virtual Bowling InterGame Online Mr Zachary Morris 11/10/09 Sega Debuts Sonic All-Stars Sports Game Line Vending Times Mr Zachary Morris 11/8/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Further details on the future of PlaySEGA. We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SEGA SAMMY's webring which includes SEGA Bingo, SEGA Sports, SEGA Drive, SEGA Casino, SEGA Poker and PlaySEGA shall in the near future be available for use in the living room via a new yet to be named streaming device based on the company's RINGWIDE hardware. The unit shall also play host to Film & TV services. The specifications of the RINGWIDE hardware are as follows - CPU : Intel Celeron 440 @ 2 GHz Graphics : AMD GPU with 128MB of GDDR3 RAM, Shader Model 4.0 compliant Audio : 5.1 ch HD Audio RAM : 1GB of DDR2 PC5300 RAM Storage : 8GB Compact Flash SEGA SAMMY plans a sub $150 price point and a release date targeting the 2010-2011 time frame. Mr Zachary Morris 11/7/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: SEGA's future amusement plans for the Middle East. We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SEGA SAMMY currently plans another 7 amusement parks in the Middle East on similar scale to the SEGA Republic which opened earlier this year in Dubai. Mr Zachary Morris 11/5/09 SEGA enters into agreement with Ztorm Ztorm Mr Zachary Morris 11/4/09 Karl Johns becomes Sega UK sales boss MCV Mr Zachary Morris 11/3/09 SEGA planning three titles based on Marvel's upcoming feature films. Iron Man 2, scheduled for April 2010 Thor, scheduled for May 2011 Captain America, scheduled for July 2011 Mr Zachary Morris 10/31/09 Further details on SEGA Casino SEGA are planning SEGA Bingo, SEGA Sports and SEGA Drive as well as Casino and Poker. Sports is about betting on sports games and Drive is about skill based games. PlaySEGA will be part of the webring. All sites will use SEGA PASS to sign in. SEGA Casino currently has 130 members betting with real money. The operation is based in Alderney. Mr Zachary Morris 10/30/09 SEGA SAMMY releases financial information SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS Mr Zachary Morris 10/20/09 JAMMA smaller but positive InterGame Online Mr Zachary Morris 10/18/09 Upcoming PlaySEGA titles PlaySEGA currently lists the following titles as coming soon - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Phantasy Star 2 Toe Jam & Earl Space Harrier 2 Wonderboy in Monster World Mr Zachary Morris 10/18/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: SEGA scraps plans for new console and handheld We can officially confirm in this world exclusive that SEGA SAMMY have officially canned plans for platforms based on the RINGEDGE architecture. The story we exclusively revealed in May of this year. The reason for the cancellation is because SEGA has now found a renewed focus on PlaySEGA and believes that going forward it shall be their new platform, their new "console". SEGA believes that by 2015 they won't be supporting consoles from others vendors anymore and that their entire consumer output shall be exclusively for the PlaySEGA service. Flash based browser gaming seems to be the future and as technology improves and the audio visual experience starts rivaling those of consoles then those consoles shall go the way of the dinosaurs. Mr Zachary Morris 10/17/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: SEGA plans to increase PlaySEGA system roster We can officially confirm in this world exclusive that SEGA shall be adding titles from the SEGA Master System, SEGA Game Gear, SEGA MEGA/SEGACD, SEGA 32X and SEGA Saturn to the PlaySEGA library in the short term future. Mid term future plans for SEGA Dreamcast have been set in stone as well. SEGA has big plans for PlaySEGA and expects the subscription based service to challenge console dominance by 2015. The portal powers it's software via technologies from Adobe Systems Inc. Mr Zachary Morris 10/16/09 More details on Sega Racing Classic Further details on SEGA's upcoming RINGWIDE based racer - SEGA RACING CLASSIC Mr Zachary Morris 10/16/09 FGNOnline is officially back! Today is officially the relaunch day of FGNOnline. With the legal issues with SEGA SAMMY dealt with, FGNOnline can now resume operation on webs.com. Mr Zachary Morris Members Area Sign In or Register Recent Forum Posts Hey, hey, hey, what is going on here? by Hillary 1 months ago hey what is this site all about, & advertise your site by JamesJ 2 months ago More... Arcade All (1012) Action (260) Adventure (103) Life & Style (33) Multiplayer (38) Puzzle (323) Shooter (131) Sports (72) Strategy (197) Newest Members Copyright �2010 FGNOnline Create a Free Website at Webs.com