The Sega RingEdge

[Yakumo]

What do you guys make of this???
Source - http://fgnonline.webs.com/


Today we would like to present to you part 1 of our world exclusive report in which we shed light on SEGA SAMMY's plan for a HD casual system in development since 2007 and scheduled for worldwide release for the holiday season of 2010.

History

At the end of 1999 SEGA held a press conference where they laid out their hardware ambitions and talked extensively about broadband and a whole host of future technologies. Shoichiro Irimajiri was stated here as saying that SEGA would strike back with a vengeance in the next millenium. By Spring 2000 Irimajiri-san was already tasked with heading the development of SEGA's next console, Irimajiri was stated as saying that it would be a joint venture with numerous companies because the future box would do more than just play videogames thus they had to partner with cable companies, telecommuncation companies and Hollywood conglomerates. The aim for the design was a single chip solution measuring in at 250 million transistors ready for a Q4 2004 worldwide release. What is not known by the mainstream is that SEGA at this time was also in early stages of development for a 3D handheld which was to be based on the chip that went on to be known as the MBX developed by Imagination Technologies PowerVR division. The PowerVR MBX hit silicon in 2002 about the time SEGA had initially planned on launching a new Game Gear. This device would have beaten the PSP to market by 2 years. All of these plans where scrapped however by Isao Okawa who foresaw a software future for the company, the rest of the company however where vehemently against the idea of software only.

Fast forward a few years to early 2003 when Hideki Sato and the rest of SEGA's high level executives were desperately in search for either a merger or even a sale of the company. The discussions where being held with Sammy, Namco, EA and Microsoft. Again what is not known to the general public is that the reason for SEGA's desperation was that at this very moment SEGA had yet another system in development which had a worldwide target ship date of Q4 2005. This system would have competed against what went on to be known as the XBOX360 and Sony's PS3. The system was designed around a PowerVR Series 5 GPU and an unknown CPU, using standard DVD it was to be a cost/performance solution targeting a $300 launch price tag whilst simultaneously incorporating equal 3D throughput as the higher priced offerings by the competition. SEGA and Imagination Technologies on the 18th of March 2004 released a press release regarding the development of the chip for arcade use. Come Jamma 2005 when the world was expecting SEGA to unveil it's PowerVR based arcade board everyone was shocked to learn of the LINDBERGH which was basically a PC tower with an nVidia 6800GT and a Intel Pentium 4 3GHz Prescott. Whatever happened to the PowerVR based integrated silicon arcade board? Simple, the console that was to be based on the arcade board was scrapped by the newly formed SEGA SAMMY. With no console counterpart for the arcade board it wasn't financially feasible to spend tens and indeed hundreds of millions of dollars on integrated silicon thus SEGA quietly without telling anyone just took a mother board and slotted in components from a mid range PC from 2004 and called it "LINDBERGH". The PowerVR Series 5 whose development SEGA funded lived on however as the PowerVR SGX series of mobile GPU's. The Series 5 architecture was designed to be highly scaleable, low end parts for mobile phones and high end parts for arcade boards and consoles, unfortunately the world never got to see the performance of the higher end variants.

So to recap -

There was a next gen system in development in 2000 which was scrapped by owner Isao Okawa and there was a next gen system in development in 2003/2004 which was scrapped by Isao Okawa's friend and new owner Hajime Satomi.

Present and Future

With the Nintendo Wii hitting retail and gaining worldwide superstardom of the likes never witnessed SEGA SAMMY once again immediately got to work on another system with orders from the boss himself Satomi-san. This system shall be a HD casual console and is designed to compete with the successor to the Wii. The design of the system FGN can officaly confirm was finalised in late 2008, it's arcade variant goes by the name "RINGEDGE" the specifications of the system are as follows.

The chosen CPU is the Intel Pentium E2160 Allendale 1.8GHz Dual-Core Processor, the GPU of choice is the Shader Model 4.0 compliant 9600GSO with 384 MB GDDR3 RAM, System memory measuring 1GB DDR2-800. Other features include an onboard HD audio DSP, 32GB SSD, standard DVD, and WiFi connectivity. SEGA SAMMY plans on shipping the system with two controllers, a motion sensing remote and one which looks similar to the Saturn 3D controller. One for casual gaming the other for non-casual. To top this off SEGA SAMMY shall be using a stripped down version of Microsoft's Windows Embedded Standard 2009 for ease of development. This particular version differs from the standard version where only the DirectX functionality is included, the standard edition costs $90 per shipping device. As SEGA SAMMY's version doesn't include the non gaming features SEGA SAMMY has managed to get a hold of the OS for less than half of that cost.

SEGA SAMMY plans on launching the system in time for the holiday season of 2010 for no less than $200 and no more than $250. The company doesn't plan on publically acknowledging the project this year, thus an official announcement won't take place until 1H 2010.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our world exclusive where we shed light on SEGA SAMMY's consumer plans for the "RINGWIDE"

[Sojiroh]

I don't know, smells like BS to me.

[neoblast]

Hummm, sega returning to the home console market to compete the wii2?
Sounds interesting but seems like nothing more than rumors.

Ringedge will be the arcade and ringwide the home console?

[Ground Zero]

Sounds like April fools day to me.

[moribund112]

Oh my god please, please, please be true.

I don't know why, but even having a Sega branded piece of hardware would make me jump for joy.

Also Sega, please get the old guys back on Sonic Team and make a REAL successor to the series. Please.

Oh and VF5R k thx.

[MentalMan]

Sounds weird and not even appealing. Competing with wii? Yay for more shovelware casual crap.

However if that RingEdge/RingWide thing is what it think it is, it could mean that there would be easy arcade ports. Kinda like dreamcast and naomi im guessing.

Meh, i'll just wait and see, not having any hopes for it ..

[jp.]

I don't know if I would want a console from current day Sega.


Maybe if Yu Suzuki, Naoto Ohshima, Yukio Futatsugi, and Mizuguchi all came back...

[saturn_worship]

suzuki is not missing..

[saturn_worship]

web is offline....smells bad...

[Druid II]

So, every time Sega releases a new arcade hardware, suddenly everyone thinks they are back in the console business?

[saturn_worship]

Well, seems not legit to me...but it gave some interesting info..we will see anyways...it said something about part 2.

[Anthaemia.]

Ringwide was officially unveiled earlier this year in its arcade guise, but I guess Sega could be waiting to announce a console version. If this does happen, let's hope management has the sense not to even try competing against Nintendo... unless they've got a really clever gimmick that puts the Wii/DS to shame in comparison, that is! Then again, who else would rather Sega pool its now limited resources together and create a similarly high-end platform as the Ringwide using cheap PC-based components with the likes of Virtua Fighter 6, a "proper" Sonic game or perhaps even Shenmue III as launch titles? Finally, I should just point out that Sega's continued hardware development behind closed doors isn't really news (well, to some of us).

[A. Snow]

I don't buy it. Granted it is supposedly two years away but this is Sega making a comeback. I just can't see this not leaking the minute SoA or any 3rd party developer found out.

[jp.]

Originally Posted by saturn_worship

suzuki is not missing..

He was retiring last I heard.

[saturn_worship]

if this is true, i will pray to segata for good quality software

[Ryo Suzuki]

mmmm... i can't believe it.

[saturn_worship]

i hope that web isn't a load of crap. if you look at it, they posted another news about something called SEGA REPUBLIC wich seems legit.

[SuperGrafx]

I think the market is already at the point of saturation, so yet another hardware platform just doesn't make sense.
Wii, Xbox, PS, PSP and DS...what sort of market differentiator could we possibly see from a new Sega console? My opinion is nothing...the bases are already covered and a new entry would likely just be ignored by consumers and developers alike.

[GaijinPunch]

What do I make of it? 2 things.

1: I don't get excited until there's penetration.

2:

- Zach Morris

Uh... the guy from Saved By the Bell wrote this?

[MetalSlime]

If only it were true....