Codename: Black Belt

Next Generation Online has received impressive first insights into Sega's next game machine - codenamed Black Belt.
March 13, 1997



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Developers are now hearing the first details of Sega's next machine which is supposedly based upon two key technological elements. The first element is the inexpensive Videologic/PowerVR PCX2 chipset which is expected to cost manufacturers less than $30 in lots of 10,000 units. NEC has previously confirmed that they have spoken with Sega about the use of the PowerVR hardware in future systems. Such a system would provide hardware support for anti-aliasing, mip-mapping, z-buffering (albeit not a standard method), texture filtering and alpha-channeling.
The system is also expected to sport some as yet to be named 64-bit CPU (rumored to be a PowerPC of some variety) as well as utilizing a CD format. There is still no word on the polygon handling capacity of the unit.

The second major component of the system is said to be the Microsoft Arcade Operating System. Yu Suzuki has been rumored to have been in Redmond, visiting Microsoft a little less than a year ago investigating the OS. Such a system allows for easier development with more standardized tools. Furthermore, arcade games developed to use the OS could relatively easily be ported to the new system.

Currrently Sega and SegaSoft are said to be working with the hardware in its current form. Some developers should be receiving development kits as early as this Christmas, with a system release possibly as early as Christmas '98.

While the developers that Next Generation Online spoke to were unaware of the Black Belt's expected price point, all of them said that it should provide a much needed boost in performance and ease of development.

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Jacobi said:

The 3DFX DC would've been awesome

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3Dfx Confirms Black Belt and Banshee

In a report to the SEC, 3Dfx confirms its role in the development of Sega's next console as well as the existence of its Banshee chipset.
April 19, 1997

According to its report to the SEC, 3Dfx filed for an initial public offering (IPO) yesterday, confirming the existence of both Sega's Black Belt and its own Banshee chipset which Next Generation Online has been reporting on for nearly a month.

The document filed with the Security and Exchange Commission confirms that 3Dfx will be using its Voodoo Graphics architecture to develop a graphics subsystem for a new Sega game console. It would also seem that Sega is expected to invest heavily in 3Dfx, acquiring 700,000 of the initial 4.2 million shares that 3Dfx is offering. Furthermore, the agreement grants Sega the exclusive rights to the architecture for the next three years with regard to use in home consoles. Finally the report also confirms the existence of its Banshee board project that it so adamantly denied existed not more than a month ago when Next Generation Online first exposed the project.

With regard to the Black Belt, the report itself states: "Voodoo Graphics technology is also the graphics architecture for the 3D media processor chipset that the company is developing for license to Sega Enterprises, Ltd. ("Sega") for use in Sega's next generation consumer home game console. "

The Banshee project is clearly revealed with the report states: " The company has commenced development of Banshee, which is intended to be a high performance, fully-featured single chip, 3D/2D media processor for the PC and coin-op arcade markets. The company expects to begin commercial shipments of Banshee in the first quarter of 1998. All of the Company's products are manufactured, assembled, tested and packaged by third-party suppliers."

It is somewhat surprising that 3Dfx has so boldly exposed Sega's hand as well as its own secret projects, but during a public offering a company must show what it believes to be its best opportunities. In doing so, an IPO is likely to be more successful in garnering investors.

At press time neither Sega nor 3Dfx could be reached for comment

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Developers Debate Black Belt

In Next Generation Online's continuing series of discussions with developers regarding the potential of Sega's Black Belt, Climax's Chris Bergstresser expresses his thoughts about the system's ease of development.
April 23, 1997

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Yesterday's interview with Shiny's Dave Perry touched upon the corporate profiles of both Sega, 3Dfx and of course, Microsoft. Today's interview with the vice-president of Climax Entertainment, Chris Bergstresser enters new territory.
"Considering the way Sega is looking to setup the Black Belt system and the proposed operating system, Sega has made a good move." says Bergstresser. "Judging from the proposed plans, development for the system is going to be incredibly easy and development cycles will be considerably shorter than typical titles now."

Bergstresser went on to comment that if Sega is going to use the same Microsoft arcade OS that machines will be using in the arcade, "the process of porting games is going amazingly simple. All developers will have to do is sneeze and a game will pop out."

Because of the short amount of time it will take to do PC or even arcade ports, developers will be forced to make original titles instead of cashing in on ports to the hardware. "In a sense I like this situation better, because it's more interesting and more of a challenge to do original titles," says Bergstresser.

Expanding upon the ramifications of simple development, Bergstresser continues: "Because games will be so easy and fast (and thus cheap) to port to or even develop unique titles for, we may even see the retail price of games drop slightly." Berstresser qualified this statement: "Then again, we may see prices stay the same for a while as publishers recoup the losses they've been taking for the last few years [laughs]."

With regard to Microsoft's involvement with the project, Bergstresser voiced some concern over how much of the system's RAM is going to be occupied by the operating system. "While it's cool that there is going to be a more standard OS that makes it simple to jump between platforms, it is going to be something that has to be adhered to. We still don't know exactly how good the OS is going to be for gaming and it may be an anchor weighing down system's performance." says Bergstresser. "The lazy developer will be thrilled that he doesn't have to work hard to get his game running, but until we know exactly how the OS will work, it's impossible to say that it's going to allow for new heights in gaming excellence."

Tomorrow, Next Generation Online will be speaking with the president of High Voltage Software, Kerry Ganofsky about his thoughts upon Sega's proposed system.

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High Voltage on Black Belt

High Voltage's vice-president of development, Scott Corley talks about operating system restrictions and potential system power for Black Belt.
April 24, 1997

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As a number of hardware manufactures have learned in the past, a system is only as good as the software on it. To this end, developer support has been a major factor in a system's success or failure.
As a part of our continuing series of discussions with developers regarding their current thoughts on the Black Belt, Scott Corley of High Voltage Software lends his insights.

"With the Black Belt system, Sega could be in a really good position if they give it some time and look to release it in about two years." says Corley. "Sega needs to develop a system that's going to be competitive with Sony's and Nintendo's next systems."

Corley also doesn't believe that there is necessarily the right technology to provide a major leap forward in gaming right now. "It doesn't seem like a system that is expected in the next year and a half is going to impress anybody." Referring back to the leap in game quality that the PlayStation provided when it was first shown in 1994, Corley says that Sony is likely to be investing a lot of R&D in providing a similar leap for its next system. "If Sega doesn't make that sort of leap and people can't distinguish the Black Belt from the Nintendo 64 or PlayStation, they're going to be in trouble."

Returning to the software side of discussion, Corley feels that while Virtua Fighter 3 is a no-brainer title for the system it "won't blow anyone away or be a huge leap in gaming".

Having worked with a number of systems that have attempted higher level interfaces with hardware, Corley feels much like Dave Perry did on the matter. "If Microsoft supplies services that are reliable and efficient then great. But if they are trying to 'hide' elements of the system than it won't be worth it."

To sum up, Corley said "If Sega can get passed all these hurdles and given enough time, the system does have the potential to be excellent."

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Black Belt from a Lockheed Perspective
Two former Lockheed Martin employees, N-Space's Erick Dyke 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 Dyke 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 Dyke 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 Dyke 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 Dyke. "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 Dyke 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 Dyke. "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, Dyke 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 Dyke 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 Dyke.

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Black Belt CPU Comparison

There are currently two processors being considered for the CPU of Black Belt. Next Generation Online explores the cababilities of both.
May 2, 1997

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The PowerPC 603e and the Hitachi SH4 are currently the two processors under consideration by Sega for use in Black Belt. Both processors are extremely good at floating point calculations.
PowerPC 603e

Specifications

16-Kbyte instruction and 16-Kbyte data caches
Superscalar--3 instructions per clock cycle
On-chip power management
32/64-bit data bus mode
Fully JTAG-compliant
Performance

166 MHz
SPECint95* 3.9 (1) - 4.5 (2)
SPECfp95* 2.5 (1) - 3.3 (2)


200 MHz
SPECint95* 4.4 (1) - 5.1 (3)
SPECfp95* 2.8 (1) - 3.7 (3)


240 MHz
SPECint95* 4.9 (1) - 6.3 (3)
SPECfp95* 3.1 (1) - 4.6 (3)


*Estimated performance.
(1) 66 MHz Bus, L2 - 512 KB, 70 ns DRAM
(2) 66 MHz Bus, L2 - 1 MB, 60 ns DRAM
(3) 66 MHz Bus, L2 - 1 MB, SDRAM




Hitachi SH-4

While the SH-4 is not yet in production, it was initially announced at the Microprocessor Forum in October of 1996. Hitachi announced that it would have first silicon in the first quarter of 1997 with production beginning late in the second quarter of 1997.

The design of the SH-4 itself lends itself well to generation of 3D graphics. Current specifications are:


200MHz
360 Dhrystone v1.1 MIPS
2-way superscalar
32-bit integer, 64-bit floating point
8Kbyte instruction cache, 16Kbyte data cache
5 stage pipeline
floating-point unit that can do the following:
scalar product in 3 cycles, fully pipelined (single-precision floating point) using just 1 instruction
matrix transform in 7 cycles, partially pipelined, single- precision floating point, using 1 instruction. That's 16 multiplies and 12 additions, all single-precision fp, in 1 instruction.
208 or 256-pin package
1.8 Watts worst-case power consumption
Even at the processor's initial announcement last October, certain magazines were already considering the possibility of its use in the next Sega console. According to the October 28th issue of Microprocessor Report: "The new core seems likely to appear in videogames, possibly from Sega, but it may not debut until 1998." Such predictions are looking more and more possible considering the proposed timing of Black Belt.

Prices have not yet been announced for the Hitachi chip yet, but it is expected to be the cheaper of the two possible solutions before Sega right now. As it stands now, Sega has still not made a decision as yet upon which processor to use as its CPU.

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Black Belt Recap

May 29, 1997
Today's special include ten facts that everyone should know about Sega's next system, Black Belt.


3Dfx has been contracted to provide the 3D sub-system for the unit. It will be some variant of its Voodoo graphics architecture but exactly how many texelfx and pixelfx units will be included or exactly what sort are as yet unknown. Because of this it is impossible to determine exactly what the capabilities of the system will be. As a side note, Sega will be purchasing approximately 17 percent of 3Dfx when it goes public in a few weeks. 3Dfx's involvement with the project was confirmed via a report it made to the SEC in trying to go public.

In determining which 3D hardware to use, Videologic and NEC were approached by Sega to do work on the project using their PowerVR architecture.

The unit will have at least 16MB general RAM in addition to 2-8MB dedicated texture and audio memory.

Sega will be creating a lower level abstraction layer for the main OS for the unit, but Microsoft will also be providing higher level tools very similar to its DirectX APIs. Microsoft's involvement is expected to allow developers currently using DirectX on the PC and arcade to do easy and cheap conversions to the new Sega hardware.

The name 'Black Belt' is the original project name. Members of the project in the US still use this name, while Sega of Japan is referring to the same project now as 'Dural'. Early on, Sega was contemplating a name change for the project and it appears to have done so.

Games currently known to be under development for the system in the US and Japan are two sports titles (basketball and soccer) as well as Virtua Fighter 3.

Sega still denies all knowledge of the project stating "Sega hasn't announced any information about future platforms, plans or partners."

Developers will be solicited at this year's E3 behind closed doors to develop for the system. A number of traditional Sega supporters are already privy to many of the details surrounding the system.

Developers Next Generation Online has spoken to have unanimously agreed that Sega's proposed hardware is indeed a step in the right direction with regards to ease of development, potential power and partners (3Dfx and Microsoft).

Development kits will be available for third party licensees in April of 1998. The system is currently slated for release in Japan in late 1998 but this is a very aggressive timeline given length of development cycles. A US release is expected the following Fall ('99).

A target price point for the system are currently unknown.

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3Dfx Loses Sega Contract

July 23, 1997

Just prior to press time, Next Generation Online
received official word that Sega has terminated its
development contract with 3Dfx.

While earlier reports from some trade magazines and web sites had
indicated 3Dfx had already lost its contract, the official decision
was only made final this morning. 3Dfx itself issued a release
regarding its situation.

As first uncovered by Next Generation Online back in April, 3Dfx
has been working under contract with Sega to create the 3D
sub-system for its next console. During that period, Sega had funded
the development to date for the new chipset and even had made an
equity investment of nearly $2 million into 3Dfx.

"We are disappointed with this notification and believe that it is
without legal justification," said Greg Ballard, president and CEO of
3Dfx. "However it is important to remember that Sega is only a
fraction of our business, representing less than ten percent of our
projected 1998 revenue. Our base business of selling 3D accelerator
chips into the PC market remains strong and is even strengthening.
We will release our earnings after the market closes on Thursday,
July 24, and anticipate that they will be consistent with analysts'
expectations. In addition, the rest of 1997 already looks to be very
positive."

3Dfx believes that under the terms of its contract with Sega that the
company will be explore its options including legal recourse.

The other potential candidate for the contract was rival chipset
company, PowerVR, whose Highlander technology (or some
derivative thereof) is now expected to be in use. According to
sources, Sega will have preliminary development kits in developers'
hands by the end of this quarter. In the mean time the company has
been encouraging developers to begin working with the PowerVR
SDK for PC.

With the termination of the Sega contract, it is expected that the
three year exclusive rights to console applications of the Voodoo
technology will revert back to 3Dfx. As a result, the company
should be able to pursue other console vendors for similar
opportunities.

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Sega's US Hardware Team Resigns
Several members of Sega's Black Belt design team resigned last week.

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bud said:

ITS F*CKING DEAD

GET OVER IT

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BlueTsunami said:

How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad.

I thought wed get to see forever
But forevers gone away
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

I dont know where this road
Is going to lead
All I know is where weve been
And what weve been through.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope its worth all the wait
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And Ill take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And Ill take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

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Rabid Wolverine said:

Never Forget!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lt1o7nwU8M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkPCzDn2j1o&mode=related&search=

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Rabid Wolverine said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzaYKQO0AyQ

Sonic Adventure and Segata Sanshiro were the bomb!

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soul creator said:

me, 9-10 years ago:

"wow, it's powerful, easy to develop for, has a built-in modem, and it's cheap. They're correcting every mistake they had with the Saturn! Clearly, Sega is gonna make a comeback!"

:-/

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gregor7777 said:

I think it was a fantastic idea for a company to develop two different hardware consoles at the same time.

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bud said:

ITS F*CKING DEAD

GET OVER IT

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Miniboss1232 said:

They seemed to do that a lot. If you read some of the interviews with the Sonic X-treme guys, they talked about this power struggle between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Japan, being the "home" entity, generally won out though.

Sega's history is so confusing simply because of this sort of sibling rivalry between the American and Japanese branches. Heck, Sonic 1 was developed in Japan, while Sonic 2 was developed in America (albeit by a lot of the same team members as the first game). A house divided, and all that...

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TheIkariWarrior said:

before the internal Black Belt vs Dural/Katana/Dreamcast struggle, there were earlier efforts to do one of several things.

a.) not release the Saturn in 1994, 1995 at all, wait until until 1996 when a strong 3D machine could be built.

b.) after Saturn was released, Sega worked with Nvidia, to make the NV2 chip for a Saturn replacement

c.) work with Matsushita/Panasonic, use the 3DO M2 as the basis of Sega's next system, or an upgrade to Saturn, or make a Saturn/M2 all in one console

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Armitage said:

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Binary Compatible said:

-- PowerVR NOT to be used in Sega's next Console --

This is enough. You should all forget about what you
read here. The fact is, Sega's next machine is not
powered by PowerVR; on the conterary, Sega is
currently dropping its support for PowerVR card. All
the PC games originally intened for PowerVR is now for
MMX instead.

I don't know where this ridicules rumor started,
but it simply is not true. Next Generation, the
source this false rumor, is widely called Sony
Generation by non PlayStation ownwers because of
its extreme biase toward Sony and its machine.
It will do anything to undermine Sega and
Nintendo's positions, even resorting to spreading
false rumors like this. Previously Sony Generation
spread insane rumors like Sega was about to license
Matsushita's M2 because Saturn was not good enough,
and that Sega was going to drop its machine and
become a thirs party developer for Sony, etc. This
Sega PowerVR machine is latest of Sony Generation's
lying campaign designed to hurt Sega.

For those who don't know, Sega subcontracted all of
its hardware engineering work to Lockheed Martin Corp.
Lockheed Martin has been engineering all new Sega
hardwares since 1993, beginning with Model2 and current
Model3 board. Model4 and Saturn2, both built around
Lockheed Martin's own Real3D architecure(which Intel
also licensed for use in its own 3D accerelator BTW)
are due out 1998.

So stop this insane rumor.

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Nobody's Perfect said:

"Black Belt"? Give me a break. It does not exist.

Sony Generation wants you to believe that Sega is going
to make a console out of PowerVR(a chipset Sega rejected
couple months ago. Namco did the same too, since their
System33 is nowhere to be found) and Microsoft ArcadeOS
(Who is stupid enough to run a fat and slow Microsoft OS
on performence critical consoles and arcade systems?).
Better yet, Sega is going to reveal the system in April
3rd, around same time details of Sega's hot 1997 Saturn
line up(VF3, PDRPG, Virus, Sonic eXtreme, and Grandia)
are revealed.

Just think for a minute. Does this make any sense to
you? Of course not!!!!!!!! Why the hell would Sega
reveal the specs of its next machine now, which would
destroy Saturn's current sales? There is no way in hell
Sega would talk about details of its new Lockheed Martin
machine until spring/fall of 1998.

On April 3rd, you will see Sony Generation's deceptions
and lies once and for all.

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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.

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Nobody's Perfect said:

So Sega chose Highlander over Real3D for its next machine; it
was probably the worst mistake Sega maded in years, probably
even worse than the decision to upgrade Saturn to dual CPU
machine. While Sega can't see the benefit of Real3D, somebody
else does; it is Intel.

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While Intel worked with Lockheed Martin for only a year, Intel
already likes Real3D so much that they want to buy it. At the
same time, Sega worked with Lockheed Martin for six years, yet
it dumped Real3D and went with Highlander for its next console
in the end.

I am so sad that Sega can't see the advantages Real3D offers,
while Intel does. While Sega complains about Real3D's high cost,
Intel's going to pump out millions of dirt cheap Intel740 that
give Voodoo cards a run for their money in 3D performance,

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TheIkariWarrior said:

games are still being released on Dreamcast, this very month even.

get over the fact that, Dreamcast isn't dead >_>

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Razoric said:

Ahh yes the Dreamcast. GAF's most overrated system. The controller sucked, the VMU sucked (BEEP) and most of the games sucked. Rest in pieces, DC.

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TheIkariWarrior said:

casual gamer revealed! :lol


Soul Caliber says hi

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Razoric said:

The controller sucked...

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