Last Monday 2-09-2013, at a special “private event” in Japan, Sega has unveiled the newest arcade board that they are calling “Nu”. It will power their upcoming Project DIVA Arcade Future Tone game. The RingEdge 2 was quietly unveiled 6 months ago and has primarily been used for their ALL.NET Pras-Multi network in Japan. Some big games like Guilty Gear Xrd are going to be using it, and I believe that the new Transformers game will be but that is unconfirmed for now. This is also a PC-based unit running on Windows 8 Embedded. It uses an Intel Core i3-3220 processor, 4GB DDR3 PC-12600 RAM, an nVidia GTX650 Ti graphics card with 1GB of Video RAM, a 64GB SSD for boot and a standard SATA 500GB hd for storage.
Why are newer arcade boards so underpowered? A 650, seriously? At least it has an SSD. I also like the fact that it uses Intel and NVIDIA parts. But still, why can't someone make a high-end arcade machine? Are arcades in Japan and elsewhere in such hard times that they couldn't pay a little extra for more powerful hardware?
have you seen many arcade out there this days. No. Well that why they can not afford to put much money to make a more powerful hardware. Arcade are getting extinct and the games require now a pc based board for a game, too expensive for the arcade owners.
The people writing the code also have the benefit of knowing that they only ever have to support one particular set of hardware, so they can optimise the hell out of it without worrying about whether it's going to break on ATI/whatever. Also the age of the arcade machine having better graphics died with the Playstation, making CPU/GPU power pretty much a moot point. Innovative gameplay and dedicated cabinets are the only thing that is going to get coin drop now.
I wouldn't go that far. There were several machines (Model 3 comes to mind) that were around in the same time as the PS1 that had far superior visuals. I'd say that age ended around the time of the Dreamcast. The Naomi was, of course, more powerful than the DC, but they were still closely related.
Naomi only had more memory. Apart from that it was a Dreamcast. And as you said, the PlayStation didn't do anything to effect arcades. Arcade games were light years ahead of the PlayStation. As la-li-lu-le-lo said, it wasn't until the Dreamcast came about did the gap really close in.
I have the RingEdge 2, too and this new Nu, looks very different to the Ring family. The three members of the Ring family, RingWide, RingEdge and RingWide, shares a custom pcb called EXT I/O than is the one that contains the Keychip connector, the JVS I/O connector and the Test and Service Push Buttons, this board is interfaced to the main board using a 30 Pins I/O connector that is connected to a Cypress Multi I/O controller and basically uses a Parallel Port, for the Keychip and one Uart Port, the COM4, for the JVS. Is this board (837-14902): This board is used on all the members off the Ring family and is exactly the same. On the few photos I have of the new Nu hardware, this board seems to be not present. Even the Ring's Keychip seems to be not included in the Nu, I don't know if Sega designed another custom Keychip, or maybe they switched to a USB Token or to a Software License. The best photo I have of the Nu is this one:
I find it interesting they are going to use WES8. I haven't seen the spec comparison with previous version, but WES8 only really adds better touch support. As far as running an arcade platform, there is little reason why people couldn't use XPe (other than EOL soon) or WES7 which is very similar. I wonder if it is a cost savings benefit. None of my embedded partners have shown any sort of interest in WES 8, let alone normal Windows 8 lol. EDIT: yes I just confirmed, WES8 is significantly cheaper than WES7.
Oh for sure, but when the PS1 came out that was the first time you got 'arcade quality' graphics without having to buy a NeoGeo. Agreed it wasn't better looking than some of the arcade machines that were earning coin, but to me it was the first time modern arcade ports weren't hugely different from their arcade counterparts. Tekken and Ridge Racer spring to mind. Interesting to see Sega ditching home console hardware and continuing arcade hardware though. Who da thunk it?
I don't really think that is the reason. Look at all those super expensive authentic sega sit down cabs, they sure costs a multiple of what the game-hardware will ever cost.
The Hikaru was a totally unique system though, wasn't it? It wasn't based on the DC. It used the SH4, true, but it had a totally different custom graphics chip. Man, I wish they'd released a home version of Star Wars Racer Arcade. I loved the shit out of that game in the arcade.
Arcade machines had much better hardware than the PlayStation when it came out. Probably by the PlayStation 2 and definitely by the xbox the only reason to go to the arcades were the cabinets and not the technology inside them.
someone know price of sega nu? maybe it will be only way to play http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TERsTwRYWDE
