It is no secret that Sega is struggling to keep up with the competition, particularly in the West. Key third-party developers have recently dropped support from the system entirely, including Core and Eidos who have admitted Tomb Raider sales on Saturn were abysmal next to PlayStation. Other studios like Shiny and Working Designs have likewise moved on to securing a Sony partnership. While the system continues to thrive in Japan with titles like Grandia and Devil Summoner, dwindling support in North America has put additional pressure on Sega to make a move.
Seeking to ensure it retains a foothold in the hardware market, Sega is gearing up to leapfrog past the Saturn as preparations for its next console move into overdrive. Initially, Sega of Japan developed an NEC/PowerVR system called Dural while Sega of America worked on a 3Dfx-based system named Black Belt. Following backroom negotiations, the Black Belt was discarded in favor of Dural, prompting a lawsuit. The victorious Dural is an amazing piece of technology featuring eye-popping specs.
Dural will operate on a 200MHz SH4 chip from Hitachi. Its graphics will be rendered by the PowerVR 2, which can produce an awesome 1.5 million polygons per second. Its media drive will read regular CDs as well as system-specific 1-gigabyte superdense discs. Having learned from past errors, Sega will be prioritizing accessibility for developers and will utilize Microsoft development tools. In theory, this will simplify porting over of PC and arcade games. The launch window is expected to be late '98.
