More on PowerVR & Sega
steve rooks
The rumours are hotting up .. quote from The Sunday Times (3/30/97)
British hardware to bail out Sega
VIDEOLOGIC, the specialist multimedia hardware
group, is thought to be close to a breakthrough deal with
Sega, the Japanese games giant.
Industry sources say Sega, whose existing Saturn console
has been outclassed by the launch of Nintendo's N64
earlier this month and the Sony PlayStation, is developing
a new 64-bit console codenamed Black Belt.
Videologic has developed a graphics chip called
PowerVR, which is capable of bringing arcade-quality
graphics into the home at a fraction of the price. It is
understood to be the frontrunner for use in the Black Belt
unit, because it gives Sega the potential to make a profit
on its hardware. Consoles are usually sold as loss leaders
with the profits coming from the margins on software.
The new console is thought to be planned for the end of
1998, and if selected the Videologic chip will be a
breakthrough for a British firm. It could be worth more
than £10m in annual sales. Videologic has joined the
Japanese electronics giant NEC to develop and market
the chip.
Nick Gibson, a games analyst at Durlacher Securities,
said industry colleagues believe Sega is choosing
between Videologic and 3D FX, an American firm. "The
rumour is Videologic is the one that will provide the
hardware for the new Sega console," he said. "Its chip
was originally developed for personal computers and has
been slow to take off."
Next Generation magazine, an American computer
games publication, reports a Videologic source
confirming that Black Belt will feature PowerVR-based
architecture and that Sega is furious the information has
been leaked.
Sega in Japan did not deny the report: "We are always
researching the possibility of new hardware but don't
have any plans to announce it in the near future yet."
Malcolm Miller, Sega's Europe chief executive, is flying
to Japan tomorrow. An NEC spokesman said: "We are
in discussions with different manufacturers and are under
a non-disclosure agreement." Videologic refused to
comment.
It is in closed period with results due in May. Analysts
predict it is on course for a small loss of £1m to £2m, an
improvement on last year's £7.52m loss. It was in
discussions earlier this month with the stock exchange
about apparent breach of disclosure rules, but the issue
has now been resolved.
steve
Stephen Rooks, mailto: st...@monmouth.com
http://www.monmouth.com/~steve
Carl Mueller
st...@monmouth.com (steve rooks) wrote:
>The rumours are hotting up .. quote from The Sunday Times (3/30/97)
>[for use in its next generation game console.]
The PowerVR chip (or similar architecture) would be ideal for use in
a console (more so than a 3Dfx-type architecture) due to the fact
that it need have no external Z-buffer memory. PowerVR is also a
single chip, rather than Voodoo's current 2-chip design.
Future generations of PowerVR chips could include more on-chip
pixel memory and create elaborate shading effects which would not
be easy with a conventional architecture.
On the downside, it still must do tile-sorting of polygons,
potentially requiring more memory for polygon buffering.
-Carl (mue...@cs.unc.edu)