partial article on 3DO MX and Nintendo Dolphin

GigaDrive · May 7, 2011

This was originally a rant article from the old website VortexOnline, it's about the 3DO MX and Nintendo Dolphin

"This time Matsushita had a very viable solution for Nintendo, the MX console. What was the MX? Well, details are sketchy, but it was supposed to be the successor of the M2. Sporting two Power PC CPUs that each alone had several times the power of the M2, and pushing a lot more polygons, this system was designed for speed. Nintendo actually entered into negotiations with Matsushita about using the technology. However, Nintendo was still a fan of MIPS CPUs and wanted to use them. The architectures where not compatible, and the MX went down just like its younger brother. Or did it? Perhaps, part of it lives in the Dolphin. Rumors persist that some of the foundations of the Dolphin are based of early MX designs. Only Nintendo knows for sure."
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Thought it was pretty interesting, although I really wish I had the rest of that VortexOnline rant/article.

GigaDrive · Apr 30, 2011

I thought I'd add to this with a large (and related) Next Generation article on Nintendo's efforts to design the successor to the Nintendo 64 from back in 1998, before Project Dolphin was announced.

Although experts acknowledge that the video games business is surprisingly
incestuous by even Jerry Springer’s standards, recent developments taking place
within two of Seattle’s biggest corporations have made that fact clear for the
whole world to see. Next Generation Online exclusively reports on how Nintendo
and Microsoft wound up eyeing the same company’s chipset for the year 2000’s
biggest game console.

Few in the video game industry are aware of a rift that formed between Nintendo
and partner Silicon Graphics, Inc. just as their jointly-developed 64-bit game
console rolled off production lines. Already beginning to feel financial
strains due to changing market conditions for their high-end graphics
workstations, Silicon Graphics found itself arguing over component profits with
notoriously tight-fisted Nintendo as the system’s American launch MSRP
was lowered at the last minute before release. Although the companies
maintained their working relationship, the decidedly traditional and hard-
lined management at Nintendo had taken offense, and no longer considered SGI a
lock for development of Nintendo’s post-N64 game console.

Then several important events took place during 1997 inside of Nintendo, SGI
and one of their former competitors. Weak Japanese sales of the N64 and its
software lowered the company’s confidence in the N64 platform, and American
sales were projected to fall off as key internal software titles were
continuing to miss release targets by entire seasons. Demonstrably strong sales
of PlayStation games in the inexpensive CD format had weakened the appeal
of Nintendo’s third-party development contracts, and Nintendo started to
believe that it was in the company’s immediate interest to prepare a new
console for release as soon as Fall of 1999. At the same time, a number of
Silicon Graphics key Nintendo 64 engineers left the company to form the new
firm ArtX, with the express intention to win a development contract for
Nintendo’s next hardware by offering Nintendo the same talent pool sans SGI’s
manufacturing and management teams.

As it turns out, most of the industry’s top 3D chip experts have been lured
away from smaller firms by accelerator developers NVidia, 3Dfx and NEC, so
Nintendo’s pool of potential partners was already shrinking when it began to
shop around for a new console design team. Enter CagEnt, a division of consumer
electronics manufacturer Samsung, and here’s where the confusion begins: CagEnt
was formerly owned by 3DO, where it operated under the name 3DO
Systems and developed the M2 technology that was sold to Panasonic for $100
Million some time ago. When 3DO decided to exit the hardware business, it sold
off the 3DO Systems division to Samsung, which named it CagEnt and gave it
roughly two years to turn a profit. CagEnt owned three key technologies: a DVD
playback system, a realtime MPEG encoding system called MPEG Xpress, and a
completed game console with a brand new set of console-ready chip
designs called the MX. Adrian Sfarti, who had formerly developed the graphics
architecture design for SGI’s Indy workstation, was the head of the MX project.

The MX chipset was a dramatically enhanced version of the M2 chipset sold to
Panasonic and Matsushita, now capable of a 100 million pixel per second
fillrate and utilizing two PowerPC 602 chips at its core. (CagEnt’s executives
also boasted of a four million triangle per second peak draw rate, though the
quality of those tiny triangles would of course have been limited). Nintendo
executives Howard Lincoln and Genyo Takeda were among a group of
visiting dignitaries to tour CagEnt’s facilities, culminating in late 1997 or
early 1998 with a formal offer from Nintendo to acquire CagEnt outright. At
this point, Nintendo had terminated its development contract with SGI (see
SGI/MIPS Loses Nintendo Business).

As purchase negotiations continued, Nintendo worked with CagEnt engineers on
preliminary plans to redesign the MX architecture around a MIPS CPU, as
Nintendo’s manufacturing partner NEC has a MIPS development license but none to
produce the PowerPC 602. Nintendo and CagEnt flip-flopped on whether the
finished machine would include a built-in CD-ROM or DVD-ROM as its primary
storage medium, with Nintendo apparently continuing to insist that ROM
cartridges would remain at the core of its new game system. Yet as DVD and MPEG
technologies would have been part of the CagEnt acquisition, Nintendo would
probably have found some reasonable use for those patents eventually. The
MX-based machine was to be ready for sale in Japan in fall 1999 -- in other
words, development of games for the new console would begin within literally
months, starting with the shipment of dev kits to key teams at Rare and
Nintendo’s Japanese headquarters.

Although the asking price for CagEnt was extremely low by industry standards,
talks unexpectedly broke off in early 1998 when Samsung and Nintendo apparently
disagreed on final terms of CagEnt’s ownership, leaving Samsung’s management

desperate for a suitor to buy the company. CagEnt aggressively shopped itself
around to other major industry players. SGI’s MIPS division, reeling from the
loss of its N64 engineers to ArtX, allegedly considered
acquiring CagEnt as a means to offer Nintendo the technology it had already
decided it liked. Sega, 3Dfx and other companies toured CagEnt’s facilities and
finally CagEnt found a suitor.

In early April, Microsoft’s WebTV division ultimately acquired all of the
assets of CagEnt and hired on most of its key personnel. WebTV and Microsoft
apparently intend to use the MX technology at the core of their next WebTV
device, which as might be guessed from the graphics technology, will no longer
be limited to simple web browsing and E-mailing functionality. The next
generation WebTV box will be Microsoft’s low-cost entry into the world of
game consoles, melding the functionality of a low-end computer with a
television set-top box and game-playing abilities. Having worked with Sega
behind the scenes since 1993 or 1994, Microsoft has been quietly gathering the
knowledge it needs to market and develop games for such a device, and now it
has the hardware that even Nintendo would once have wanted for itself.

As for Nintendo, all signs point to a very unpleasant near future for the
Japanese giant. Lacking internal hardware engineers with the necessary
expertise to develop the next high-end chipset, Nintendo is now all but forced
to either partner with ArtX, or one of the 3D accelerator makers who have been
sucking the industry dry of all its most talented people, or perhaps join with
one of its other major rivals. The latest word has it that ArtX and
Nintendo are in talks to work together, perhaps under circumstances similar to
those under which Nintendo would have acquired CagEnt. Unlike CagEnt, however,
ArtX does not have a finished console or even half-completed chip designs to
sell Nintendo, and it would be unlikely that Nintendo would be able to scrape
together a reasonable system by Christmas 2000 with ArtX’s present limitations.
Additionally, SGI’s recent series of strategic lawsuits
against Nvidia and ArtX seem to be intended to serve as garlic and crosses to
stave off any Nintendo alliance with its tastiest potential allies: Nintendo
might well fear developing a new console only to find out that its core
technologies or employees are depending upon infringed patents, regardless of
the merits of those patents or the lawsuits.

Meanwhile, the company continues to harbor tremendous concerns for the future
of the Nintendo64 platform, which appears to be sinking deeper and deeper in
Japan by the day. Nintendo’s negotiations with CagEnt shed light upon the
tremendous dependence the Japanese company now has upon Rare, which has been
responsible for a number of the Nintendo 64’s best-looking games and at least
two of the machine’s most popular—Diddy Kong Racing and Goldeneye 007.
As Nintendo’s Japanese development teams have never been known for their
ability to stick to release schedules, the company’s third-party rosters have
remained bare and its management has remained dogmatically fixated upon silicon
chips as its sole means of profit, Nintendo’s problems have set the stage for a
truly interesting set of negotiations come this E3.

To sum up, readers need to understand that decisions and relationships made
early in the design process of a new console can dictate a company’s standing
in the industry for the following five years. Ripple effects from these
decisions can be felt in a company’s bottom line can be felt for even longer.
Nintendo has found itself in the unenviable position of being without an
established partner and with the clock ticking down. If Nintendo should
choose to go with ArtX (assuming it’s able to fight off SGI’s lawsuit), it will
need to complete a chip design is an extremely short period of time. If it
doesn’t go with ArtX, Nintendo will have to find a technology that is already
suited to the console market or one that can readily be changed to suit a
similar purpose. Either way, at this point the chances of Nintendo hitting its
desired 2000 release with a new system are extremely slim.
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Nintendo's choice of ArtX back in 1997/1998 sure had ripple effects. We still have the same graphics architecture in Wii. Now finally, it appears Nintendo is going to use a more modern architecture with Project Cafe.

MisterEnthusiast · May 4, 2011

I never knew there was a successor to the unreleased M2

Alchy · May 4, 2011

That is a really interesting article. Hope nobody's put off by the length.

Just wish that David Sheff would write a new Game Over book, it's too bad it ends at ~1994.

mooseblaster · May 4, 2011

GigaDrive: very interesting article you found there - I especially like the reference to Microsoft's 'WebTV' division who *may* go into videogames... and we all know how that turned out

GigaDrive · May 7, 2011

MisterEnthusiast said: ↑

I never knew there was a successor to the unreleased M2
Click to expand...

Oh yes, there was, the MX. It was reported on in 1996 by various gaming magazings. Even Next Generation magazine mentioned that 3DO had the rights to develop M3 and M4 chipsets after Matsushita bought M2 for $100M. Here's what EGM and Intelligent Gamer (or Fusion) magazine had to say about it in 1996-1997. So there is indeed mention of 3DO hardware beyond the MX.

EGM circa 1997:

The new hardware picture wouldn't be complete without including 3DO, so we'll now shift gears over to the MX. Like the M2 before it, 3DO claim the MX will be its generation's top gun. Our Q-spies report that the M2's successor is already past the design document state and is actually living breathing hardware. At the moment, the MX chipset is physically huge (it can barely fit on a good-sized table) but once 3DO gets all the bugs out, they'll work on reducing the size (common practuce in the hardware biz). By all accounts, the MX is a screamer, with close to 5 million polygons boogying around the screen at once. Not only can the MX produce N64/M2-type graphic effects like Trilinear Mip Mapping and Edge Antialiasing, but it can handle such esoteric realtime graphic functions like Anisotropic filtering, Phong-Lighting and Surface Antialiasing. The secret to the MX's ultra-high performance lies in its radical hardware architecture. Unlike all others before it, the MX's RAM is incorporated into the same chip as the CPU and graphic processor. Set up in this manner, game information can now run at the same clock speed as the CPU (a 110 MHz Power PC 604) or the graphic processor (which is basically a 128-bit ASIC). The MX is less than a year away from completion, but 3DO has already shown the technology to a large Japanese software company who has shown interest in developing for the machine and perhaps even buying the hardware rights outright. The mystery software company is led by a certain Mr. Hironobu Sakaguchi, but you didn't hear it from me.
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Intelligent Gamer/Fusion circa 1996:

Also mentioned in the article is how two new chipsets are supposedly under development. One is an enhanced M2 codenamed MX and is described as 'M2 on steroids'. BTW it is mentioned that the M is really most likely a common moniker used for version 2 type projects meaning it stands for mark, thus 'Mark 2'. And in MX the X is obviously a variable. MX so far 'offers twice the performance of the M2 chipset...currently intended for PC and arcade use...'. Finally the totally newer chipset is codenamed S42 - S being just another letter like M and 42 being the one calculated as the meaning of life by the computer Deep Thought in the Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. S42 being post 64bit era forecasting that probably is the equivalent of the M2 when the Opera was being made.
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The way I look at 3DO is like this:

Opera = M1
Bulldog = M2
MX = M2.5 or M3
'S42' (?) = M4 (?)

S42 was obviously a paper-design and never went into serious development.

MisterEnthusiast · May 11, 2011

any pictures of the prototypes?

APE · May 11, 2011

mooseblaster said: ↑

GigaDrive: very interesting article you found there - I especially like the reference to Microsoft's 'WebTV' division who *may* go into videogames... and we all know how that turned out
Click to expand...

They had their project shelved and Seamus Blackley's project made into the XBox?

GigaDrive · May 12, 2011

MisterEnthusiast said: ↑

any pictures of the prototypes?
Click to expand...

Nope.

APE said: ↑

They had their project shelved and Seamus Blackley's project made into the XBox?
Click to expand...

Basicly, yeah. Read this thread: http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=310442&highlight=1998

GigaDrive · May 23, 2011

From Next Generation #33, September 1997:

Matsushita: Finally pulling the plug
After years of delays and hype, Matsushita calls it a day for M2

Hopefully, the M2 hardware used to produce amazing effects in the unreleased D2 will end up in at least some arcade machines.

The fate of Matsushita's blighted M2 technology has finally been sealed. Next Generation has discovered that the sole licensee of the technology has cancelled the entire consumer game console project in a move that could cost the Japanese giant hundreds of millions of dollars.

Leaks reached NG at the end of May that 3DO's ill-fated 64-bit technology would not ever make it into the homes of Japanese or Western gameplayers in the form that was intended. Finally, Matsushita Industrial president, Yoichi Morishita, announced in late July that the technology would be used in a set-top multi-faceted unit similar to the plan for the ill-fated Pippin. The reasons cited for the decision include the irrepressible strength of Sony in the videogame market, and a hardware specification that would have had difficulty competing with forthcoming consoles from rival companies.

This news should come as little surprise to those who have closely monitored the development of the format. For more than a year there has been little noise made by the consumer electronics giant and many industry pundits have suspected that things were not going according to plan. Prospective M2 developer Rob Povey at Boss Game Studios echoed this viewpoint: "It doesn't surprise me a great deal but I have to say I'm a little disappointed. Matsushita would hardly have been in a strong software position if they had released — even if the first round of games had been excellent. Where were the second and third round games coming from? Their reluctance to talk to and reassure third party developers on their plans for the platform (outside of Warp, Capcom and Konami, it is assumed) would have left them with a lack of software after their initial releases, which would probably have condemned the platform in the long term anyway."

While those who sat on the fence throughout the machine's development can thank their consciences for being prudent, there's no denying that this decision represents a final kick in the teeth for those who stood by the format during its teething problems. Committed Japanese developer Warp certainly has the most at stake. The company's real-time 3D adventure game, D2, has been in development since the very first M2 development kits were released by The 3DO Company over two years ago, and this news leaves boss Kenji Eno with little choice but to consider porting the title to a 32-bit console or perhaps even the PC.

A similar course of action seems likely for other known M2 titles in development such as Power Crystal (NG 29) and Studio 3DO's M2 Racing. The latter was a title that originally lead the M2 hype charge and was revealed to U.S. game magazines recently probably in an effort to draw attention to the title and to secure conversion rights for the aborted project. However, when NG contacted the developer for a comment about the move, the company denied all knowledge of the cancellation.

As for Hull-based Perceptions, NG was unable to contact the company for a comment on the situation.

While all plans for a dedicated gaming console incarnation of the M2 technology have been abandoned, its implementation in the arcade is continuing. Despite Panasonic's plans to play down Konami's use of the M2 technology in its Polystars coin-op, the arcade company is expecting to release another polygon-based game soon. Capcom will follow suit (with a 3D beat 'em up) shortly after, it's also possible that titles in development for the console could still be ported to the arcade board.

With its interminable development delays, M2's perceived advantages over the competition have naturally suffered at the hands of time. With Sega and Sony already, well into the development of their own second generation of superconsoles, the most Matsushita could have hoped for was a technological lead of about a year before more powerful machines would have eclipsed it. A likely destination for the complete M2 technology could be a 3D card for the PC, although other consumer goods employing the technology cannot be ruled out.

Considering the sheer worldwide market presence of Matsushita, it seems likely that a new strategy using the experience assimilated from its work on M2 will be used to formulate a brand new videogaming agenda — NG has already heard rumors of a much higher hardware specification and one that probably also encompasses DVD and internet initiatives. What does seem clear, though, is that the company has realized that it will need a foolproof launch strategy if it is to stand a chance against the vast market share currently enjoyed by Sony, M2 in'its current form clearly was not up to the job.

This turn of events ultimately places Matsushita in a difficult position. There is the embarrassment felt toward the third parties that have committed precious resources to developing titles, and there is the technology itself that could go to waste — a crying shame after so many promises. Matsushita may be able to stomach the enormous losses involved in the decision, but this will be no compensation for the third parties who now face the biggest obstacle of all: a console consigned to the shelf.
Click to expand...

That "much higher hardware specification" was the MX.

partial article on 3DO MX and Nintendo Dolphin

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partial article on 3DO MX and Nintendo Dolphin

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