Shenmue III development started

[charlesr]

or not.

[kryss]

I heard it was finished before the first one was made but SEGA have been waiting for serious financial issues before admitting and releasing it. Dreamcast owners will be so happy.

[buster_broon]

Like more current big names it's in production with shenmue 4 at the same time

[Colin]

[mekanor]

I’m doing a little bit of fanboy- back-peddling here. I’ve recently got my old Dreamcast up and running again after a lot of hassle with faulty AV cables. It took me ages to get around to replacing the cables, mainly down to sheer lethargy, but this has left me with a taste for Sega.

I did a little digging into something I saw last year to see if any new developments had happened since then. Back in February 09, Sega announced it was working on two new sets of hardware called the Ringedge and Ringwide.

Naturally the internet blew up in typical knee-jerk reaction with morons shouting ‘FAKE! FAAAAKE!’ without assessing the hard evidence first and even bigger morons already writing blank cheques to pay for the console at launch. The fact is, these things are real and I’ll go into them in more detail shortly.

This is old news but seeing as a developer just announced Sega Zone recently, a new retro console that houses 50 classic titles and supports motion control, I thought it was time to revisit the odds that Sega are gearing up to take on the console market again. Oh and this little beauty will be available stateside in Summer 2010.

Right, so it’s pretty obvious that the Dreamcast is a much-loved console with a strong homebrew community still making new games to this day. It’s a console that refuses to die thanks to the tireless efforts of a passionate fan community. Now I’ve never heard of a console garnering this kind of cult following before. I’m willing to be proven wrong on this subject, but the passion from the scene is admirable.

Sega has really hit a confident stride with its recent published titles such as Bayonetta, Madworld, Alien Vs Predator, as well as in house titles like House of the Dead Overkill and the recently announced Sonic 4: Episode One. Their retro franchises hold real currency and for once I think I may be right in saying that they are more popular than Nintendo among older gamers despite not even having a console on the market. I’d like to hear your opinions on that last point as I’m genuinely interested to see what gamers thing so feel free to reply to this thread.

Ringedge and Ringwide are sparking a lot of debate. Ringedge. Definitely not a home console. But that hasn’t stopped Sega before…

The Ringedge is, (Thanks Wikipedia…) “the main console of the Ring Series. It has better graphics and a larger storage than the RingWide. It also sports a better graphics card than the Lindbergh system, allowing for a higher performance graphically, all while costing less to produce. The use of an Intel Pentium Dual-Core (1.8Ghz per core) processor delivers better performance than Lindbergh’s Pentium 4 (3.0Ghz) processor. A solid state drive also greatly reduces wear-and-tear due to lack of moving parts, and also has much higher transfer rates than a hard disc drive, leading to better performance and loading times.”

So this makes sense right? With the arcade sector declining in the west in favour of powerful home systems, cutting the costs tied to production and development would make sense without trimming back on performance.

Ringwide. Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean weaker, read the stats below.

Secondly, the Ringwide is (I love you Wikipedia…) “is more basic than the RingEdge, and only has 8GB (Compact Flash) of storage, while RingEdge has a 4 times larger storage (because of the use of the RAM Drive and SSD). The RingWide will be used to support games that are less graphics-intensive and that require less high-end specifications in order to cut down costs for those particular games.

I know a lot of, frankly short-sighted people who believe that the Dreamcast was a total failure. I know people are entitled to their opinions but this time they are dead wrong. I believe Sega are thinking about making at least one of the above into a home console because of one thing…

…that’s right, an ordinary old-fashioned modem cable. People often forget that Dreamcast was the first home console to feature an onboard modem and an online service. Sure it wasn’t great, but someone always has to be the first to try bold new things. It’s the only way other developers learn and improve. You never know, had Microsoft launched Live first without learning from Sega’s attempt, it could have been an abysmal service.

Now then, why is this interesting to me? Well, Sega have always been ahead of the curve in some shape or form. They proved that with kickstarting both the 16-bit and 128 bit era generations with Genesis and Dreamcast respectively.

Could Sega be gearing up to spearhead the streaming market?

Retail chains that sell games are fading fast. They are hemorrhaging money thanks to the advent of digital streaming services like Steam. Even Microsoft has jumped on the trend with its games on demand service. It’s not unrealistic to say that in 10-20 years we will buy all games through the wire, doing away with retail chains altogether. All it takes is for bandwidth to improve worldwide to make it function. With Japan already delivering the a suitable 1Gb/s fibre, this is a real prospect.

So if the future is online services that let you stream games straight to your TV from a console without the need for a disc tray or physical media and Sega’s Ringwide already promises such a service, the developer could easily lead the 8th generation on the front-foot. Plus, add to this the possibilities of streaming old Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive, Saturn, 32X, Mega CD, Arcade and Dreamcast back catalogues and the power of such a console is hard to underestimate.

I may be going out on a limb with this, but trust me, streaming is the future and it will start to really batter physical media such as Xbox 360 and PS3 discs year-on-year. Protest if you must, but this is the way the industry is heading and if Sega convert these arcade boards to home use then it already has a real money-spinner on its hands. They always like to lead the pack and these machines would leave other devs in the dust if they were to hit the stores.

[yesteryeargames]

April 1st oh how we love you

[Goemon]

Thing is...It probaby was started way back when, and then shelved

[Neon Ignition]

Definitely, there's several screens on the net of sequences that weren't in S1 or S2

[wakka]

Oh not this Ringedge/Ringwide stuff again -.-

I just want them to make a manga at this point to finish the Shenmue story it could be a really epic one.

[vulcan77]

If only Dreamcast has last longer ..... ehhh

[QualityChimp]

[monel]

That was pretty good, sad there were no sailors or questions about a black car on the day it snowed.

[djtickle]

Why do I do this to myself!!

[112]

Lol funny stuff... The dream lives on...

112

[Kit]

lol. Needs more sailors and black cars splashing people on 'that day'.