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6/13/2025, 1:05:10 AM
>Just sticking with the origins of the Dreamcast, were there really two different concepts for the Dreamcast in development? There are plenty of forum posts and articles online that state that there were competing projects - one from SEGA of America called Black Belt which was 3Dfx based, and another from SEGA of Japan called Dural which was NEC PowerVR based. Can you comment on these projects and how it was decided that the Dural concept was the one that won? If so, how different do you think the 3Dfx system would have been?
I believe SEGA of America wanted the 3Dfx version and SEGA of Japan wanted the NEC PowerVR. Both made sense for different reasons. With 3Dfx, there were more resources and documentation available for development in the US and Europe. That and it was understood that development would be easier, especially for PC ports. The NEC PowerVR made NAOMI ports simple and was easy to program, however, it was not as well supported (yet) in the US. I doubt Model 3 games would have worked too well on either. Although there was a PowerVR chip shortage when the Dreamcast launched in Japan, both chips had their pluses and minuses. In the end, I'm not sure it would have made too much of a difference.
>Katana became Dreamcast
>BlackBelt eventually became XBox
I believe SEGA of America wanted the 3Dfx version and SEGA of Japan wanted the NEC PowerVR. Both made sense for different reasons. With 3Dfx, there were more resources and documentation available for development in the US and Europe. That and it was understood that development would be easier, especially for PC ports. The NEC PowerVR made NAOMI ports simple and was easy to program, however, it was not as well supported (yet) in the US. I doubt Model 3 games would have worked too well on either. Although there was a PowerVR chip shortage when the Dreamcast launched in Japan, both chips had their pluses and minuses. In the end, I'm not sure it would have made too much of a difference.
>Katana became Dreamcast
>BlackBelt eventually became XBox
6/8/2025, 9:09:35 PM
Honest thoughts on OG XBox?
Xbox had a high end PC-level GPU coupled with a low-tier Pentium III 733 CPU with a crippled cache. The system has Direct X 8.1, shader model 1.1, vertex shader 1.1 and two Vertex Shader units, while the Geforce 3's only had one. The Xbox GPU was quite powerful.
Xbox had a high end PC-level GPU coupled with a low-tier Pentium III 733 CPU with a crippled cache. The system has Direct X 8.1, shader model 1.1, vertex shader 1.1 and two Vertex Shader units, while the Geforce 3's only had one. The Xbox GPU was quite powerful.
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