The Big 3D Fight
Written: 11/10/99
Written by: Jellebee
   
And
So It Goes On And On. . .
Do
you know the old saying 'what goes round comes around'? Good, so do I. I was thinking and
I thought somewhat about the Sega and 3DFX deal (oops - 3dfx now) and what screwed up. I
came up with some theories of my own and some I nicked from other people. . .
One magazine claimed
that Sega of Japan and Sega of America had a competition to see who could produce the best
design for the successor of Saturn. Sega of America went with 3DFX (being American and
all) and Sega of Japan went with NEC (being Japanese and all). . .and Sega of Japan won.
Sega preferred
PowerVR2 technology to 3dfx's technology because it implemented better specifications and
more features (e.g. env bump mapping).
3dfx's design was more
expensive to manufacture and Sega's hardware profit margin would have been even smaller
than it is now.
The fact that 3dfx did
not , at that time, have its own fabrication plants and would have not been able to meet
the demand Sega was predicting for its new consoles (NEC barely managed to keep up with
initial demand).
This one is a little
tricky but here me out. Sega, being a Japanese company, went with a Japanese giant (NEC),
rather than a relatively small American company. But this theory is a little crap 'cos
Sega have had a long relationship with Lockheed Martin who designed Model 2 and Model 3
for them - but then again Lockheed was late with Model 3 and Sega was slightly pissed of
at Lockheed, indeed. And a spokesman for 3dfx said that “the deal failed because of
ego's and not just Sega’s”
No
point crying over spilt milk and 3dfx later claimed that if Sega had gone with themselves
then their PC market would have been compromised and neglected. Just look at what has
happened to the PowereVR2 for the PC (it's about 7 months late, at least).
Next page: I've got bigger
muscles then you
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