Looks like Sega might put the final nail on DC's coffin...

Looks like no more Arcade games, no more proper distribution of homebrewed games.... And the price of remaining GDROM inventory will most likely sky rocket.

Link: http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.php/Main/GDROMproductionpetition

The article includes an address in which you can mail Sega of Japan urging them to continue production of the GD-ROM discs which will officially keep the DC alive.

 

Well, at least we still have Lindbergh

 

Wait - can't Naomi operate from ROM cartridges too?

 

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=177897#post177897

Anyway, i say put it to rest. Naomi is old, and gd-rom is non standard. I'd rather have something more new and more standard. At least Lindbergh uses dvd's.

 

Yes.

As much as I don't want to see the Naomi era go away, it really comes down to economics. Keeping the production facilities/machines around costs money. Producing only ~50,000 GD ROMs a year isn't cost-effective. If the controllers at Sega decide that this is the case for the best interests of the company, there's not much else you can do.

It's not like they're producing Naomi hardware anymore, so at some point you have to make the move and shift to a newer platform. It's all about the developers anyhow.

 

This is true but its alot more expensive then just making gd roms. However I think naomi 2 only runs on gd roms.

But it really isn't the end of the world if this happens.Lindbergh is now segas main format so support for naomi 1 and 2 is already on its way to be dead.

Still it is suprsing some developers are releasing there shooters on dreamcast treating them like a neo geo release. Does anyone know how well these releases have sold in japan?

 

they have sold VERY WELL !! Every DC shooter released in the last 4 years has sold out ! Even reprints of some titles have sold out as well. Not only shooters but Baldr Force EXE sold out before it even hit the shelves ! All pre-orders. That was released after Boarder Down as well.

Yakumo

 

It's sad, it hope it don't happen so soon :/

 

Well, the format's been around for nearly 10 years now.
That's an eternity as far as a gaming medium is concerned.

 

Also there is Namco System 246/256/Super 256 (PS2 hardware) or equivalent, Atomiswave and Type-X available that offer cheap development and portable platforms.

 

Atomiswave is pretty much dead, no new games due out for the forseeable future.

So the real platforms for arcade development right now are the Namco System and Taito Type X variants, plus Lindbergh. I believe Sega will still continue to support Chihiro for a while longer (their Sangokushi and Quest of D series are still going strong and recently received updates) as well. Sega also maintains their Football Championship, Virtua Striker, horse racing and various sundry series/titles by way of Naomi/Naomi2, so it'll be interesting to see when/if these longstanding titles are moved to newer hardware or discontinued altogether.

But to me, it looks like Sega is going with Lindbergh almost exclusively for the distant future...even the previously Chihiro-based Outrun Sp is getting an update on Lindbergh according to the January issue of Arcadia. Aside from going with a proprietary PCB (ie: Cave shmups), there isn't much else out there from which to develop on.

 

Isn't there still rumor of a new arcade board from sega that is esentualy the naomi/atomiswave but even more cheaper to mass produce?

The arcades still and will always need atleast 1 low end budget platform to develope on so if sega does kill all naomi/tri-force/Chihiro support, there will probably be a new board to come out and feel the need.

Actualy False. The Naomi 2 runs on cart or GD-Rom. Both VF4 & VF4 Evo were in cart form as well as GD form. I am not fully sure why sega did that but both are easly avalible (with the cart form more expensive but this is the same issue with naomi 1 software).

:crying: I miss my naomi 2 board.

 

I've heard that rumor, but haven't seen anything to back it up at the moment. Was it the Aurora board by any chance? If so, that's only had 1 official release. Perhaps someone can clarify?

Right, which is why I just don't see them abandoning the Chihiro just yet. Naomi still sees support (I just read about some Octopus puzzle game from Compile released on Naomi), but for how much longer is anyone's guess. What else they would use for a low cost solution is beyond me, aside from existing Naomi1/2, Triforce and Chihiro...it's not like they'd suddenly jump on the Namco System boards.

Probably to ensure that arcade operators with at least some sort of Naomi2 hardware could run the game without having to invest in optional add-ons. They likely expected big things from VF4 and didn't want to lose out on any potential sales as a result of format.

 

So there's a official press-release from SEGA about this?

 

Deciding to go with the proprietary GD-ROM format ultimately backfired for Sega when its only advantage over the DVD (supposedly its better copy protection) was quickly cracked, leading to the early cop-out of the Dreamcast and its creator from the console hardware market. Had they gone for DVD instead, it's hard to say if Sega's eventual position would have been much different, although I'm sure homebrew developers and those officially still loyal to Dreamcast might not be in the predicament they are now where a few very late welcome additions to its catalogue may be compromised. Besides, with the extra space that comes with DVD, can you imagine just how more satisfying a game like Shenmue II would have become? At least with the Xbox conversion you didn't have to swap discs, even if for the Dreamcast original each concluded with a decent enough cliffhanger...

 

I don't agree with Shenmue being any better if it was on DVD. The onlything different would be less discs. All a disc does is store the information. People say that the size of the Game Cube discs held back the system. BS! Look at Bio Hazard 4 ! Most beautiful game on the system and even more beautiful than any XBOX or PS2 game and they use DVDs.

Yakumo

 

I agree with Yakumo, since basically it is all down to programming, and compression. And not size of the media. But let us hope some body (if Sega goes through with it) figure out, of how to produce GD rom discs, since then in pirate land (I wish I knew where that was on the worldmap ;-) )
can produce the GD rom discs cheaper, and in thousands.

 

GD-ROM is a secure format. The blunder on Sega's part was allowing the drive to read CD-ROMs. If that hadn't occured then the piracy thing wouldn't have been such an issue.

 

I agree with Yakumo. He's a moderator.

 

Swapping discs isn't a big deal. It only occurs once per disc and thats when you reached the end. It's not like when games were stored on floppy disk's and you had to swap between like 3 or 4 disks at random moments cause some of the data at current point was stored on another disc.

GD-ROM in the arcades is actually alot more secure then on dreamcast since the naomi gd roms require a special activation key that is different from game to game.

My guess about virtua fighter 4 running on a rom board would most likely be due to the fact that in japan vf4 was a game that ran on a network. I could be wrong though. Were there any gd rom games that were connected to the internet in the arcades?