Sega was once one of the most popular gaming hardware manufacturers in the world. But a series of poor decisions in the late ’90s, combined with Sony moving into the market with the PlayStation, meant that their greatest console, the Dreamcast, was also their last. Until now, perhaps.
Support for a new Dreamcast has been growing for a while, and Project Dream was a fan project to create, essentially, a custom Sega console built on PC hardware. However, it’s gone from fan dream to something approaching a reality because a core of passionate fans are going to pitch to Sega.
The idea is to build the Dreamcast around Sega’s custom made arcade hardware. Being that Sega is already stamping out custom boards to put in cabinets, the idea would be to use the boards in a console, as well, both to translate the arcade games to the smaller screen and to put out game development kits for cheaper prices, while using off-the-shelf processors, in this case Intel’s i5 Haswell, to overlap with PC games.
It’s ambitious in some ways; essentially Sega, if they accept the proposal, would be staking out a space in both the console markets and in Steam Machines, which have struggled to reach the economy of scale and price point needed to truly compete with the PS4 and Xbox One. The idea would be to crowdfund the console and try to pre-sell a million units. We’ll want to see exactly what it does and how it does it before we commit, but welcoming Sega back into the hardware fold would be a wonderful thing.
(via The Gaming Ground)