Future Tech - Part 13 - Sega Making a Comeback with a Next Gen Console?

techmojo (63)in #retro • 8 years ago

If you are like me you will remember the Sega systems of old, or if you are into retro gaming you will have heard of the Sega brand in one form or another. In the early/mid 90's Sega struggled to stay in the home gaming market thanks to advanced platforms introduced by Sony and Microsoft as they barged there way in, effectively shutting down the 2 major giants at the time, Sega and Nintendo. For a long time no one heard anything from either company and haven't released any new consoles.
Nintendo made a small comeback by releasing the new NES and SNES mini with Sega following suit and have had some success in relaunching their updated consoles so you could play all those cartridges you have. But nothing ''new'' from Sega though... Until now.

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The Spartan is a design concept to propose to the Sega guys to entice them back into the gaming market, and the designer is hoping that Sega will use his concept to make a huge comeback into the gaming market by giving gamers a next gen console that can play the latest triple A titles, as well as any games from old Sega consoles, from the Master System all the way up to the Dreamcast. The Spartan looks like a dream come true.

While this may seem like huge news for us Retro gamers, there are a few concerns with the new console.
They are advertising it as a 'Next Gen Console' but if we put it up against a console due for release this Christmas, the Xbox one X, things seem to be a little off.
Spartan haven't released many details regarding the technical specs, but what is available don't fill me with much hope.

Here is a side by side comparison between the 2...

                            **Sega Spartan**                      **Xbox one X**
  CPU                         Unkown                          AMD 14nm 8core 2.3ghz
  Graphics              Geforce GTX (model Unkown)            AMD Scorpio (custom 16nm) 
  Graphics RAM               4Gb Gddr5                           12Gb Gddr5 Shared
  On Board Ram               16Gb ddr4                           12Gb Gddr5 Shared
  Data Bandwidth              Unkown                                  326Gb/s
  Video                     4K (proposed)                      4K output HDR 10 support
  Optical Drive               Unkown                                UHD blu-ray
  Storage                  1Tb HDD (unknown speed)                 1Tb HDD 5200RPM
  Audio                       Unkown                       DTS/Dolby/Atmos 5.1, PCM 2.0, 5.1, 7.1
  Wireless                    Unkown                        Bluetooth, 3/5g wifi, wifi direct, IR
  Connections                 Unkown             2x HDMI, 3x USB3.0, IR, S/PDIF and Ethernet.

With what is available on paper is promising, but also lacking. The CPU is Unknown, so is the Data transfer, optical drive, audio, wireless, connections, and with what we can see, we are still left unsure.
Yes we may end up with a slimmed down version of the GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia's top end card, or we could end up with a GTX 280. with the 4gb gddr5, I am hopeful that it will be along the same lines of a GTX 1050 Ti which is more than capable of 4K gaming over 60FPS. But then again, the GTX 750 Ti had the same memory, but cant game that well at 4k. And I have one in one of my computers here.

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Compared to the Xbox which has 12Gb of shared memory, the 16gb of ddr4 is very promising, that is if they can utilize that amount of memory. I have 16gb in my machine here, the only time I use beyond 8gb of it, is when I'm rendering 4k videos or working in After effects on a page size larger than 8k. So I will be interested to see some benchmarks when the system comes out.

From what I can tell, they are utilizing actual PC components with a custom operating system. Now with the console market as a whole, they build custom parts to get the maximum out of the system, when using PC parts, although much better, use a lot more resources as the components need drivers so they can talk to each other, an affliction consoles don't have.

In regards to the 4K they want to use, they have released a 4K demo of Sonic in 4K, supposedly working on one of their machines, but if that is the case, why are we not getting any more technical specs? (You can view the snippet of 4K on there News page here)

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The Controller on the other hand is a different matter. The design is very reminiscent of the Xbox controller with the control layout. Apparently, it will have 50hours of battery life, which is more than triple the Xbox pads. 7-10 meter range, rumble motors (naturally) and they are bringing back the TURBO BUTTON!!!! and I quote... ''because that is a worthy feature''.

Aesthetically, the Console itself looks very alluring, but I wonder if they are making the same mistake as Microsoft did with the 360. designing the case before selecting the components. Will it be another console with the red ring of death?

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The idea is very promising, but he is relying solely on the fact that Sega will use his design to re enter the gaming market. Doubtful at best this idea will work unless he has already approached Sega and they have asked him for a prototype???
There are many unanswered questions surrounding the Spartan Console, but it is in its early days and there may be a bright future for Spartan.

To check out more about Spartan Console, Click Here, and if you want to stay up to date, sign up to their newsletter.
All I know is I am preying in my head '' Oh god please please please bring a sega console back to life, I want to re live my childhood and kick peoples arses online''

I will be emailing them to see if I can find out any more details regarding the hardware and software to compare against current gaming titans that are in need of bringing down a few steps and make way for some new/old blood who understand what makes gaming great.

Thanks for reading.

Stu @TechMojo