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[xexex]

okay lets get something clear right away, as of now, there is not going to be another Sega console in the forseeable future. but back in 1999-2000, it was expected that Sega would produce another machine, beyond the Dreamcast. Sega officially and unofficially mentioned this when president Shoichiro Irimajiri stepped down. he was to oversee the development of the next system. remember?


http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cach...00522.htm+Irimajiri+Dreamcast+successor&hl=en

[Tuesday, May 23, 2000]

Sega Confirmation
Sega is confirming a shuffle of the top brass. As speculated, Sega Enterprises President Shoichiro Irimajiri will step aside to allow Isao Ohkawa, president of Sega parent company CSK, to takeover. Ohkawa is moving into the hot in order to oversee a massive restructuring of Sega's development activities. The reorganization plan, originally announced in November, will split Sega's interested into a total of nine separate units organized by region and specialty. Irimajiri will stay on in a vice presidential role to focus on the creation of a Dreamcast successor.

http://www.goodcowfilms.com/farm/games/news-archive/It's%20Official...%20Sega%20Has%20a%20New%20Boss.htm

It's Official: Sega Has a New Boss

And Irimajiri has a new job.

May 26, 2000


Sega Enterprises has officially announced that Shoichiro Irimajiri will step down from his position as president in June. This announcement comes about after the company's third straight year of losses and less-than-expected Japanese sales of the Dreamcast console and software.
Effective June 1, 60-year-old Irimajiri will become Sega's vice chairman with current chairman Isao Okawa, age 74, taking on the presidential responsibilities while still retaining his chairman title. Sega has seemingly made no announcement regarding Irimajiri's new responsibilites, but previous reports suggesting that he'd be working towards the development of a successor console to the DC are in line with Okawa's recent comments that Sega would be working on its own in the development of a new system.

It will be interesting to see what pans out.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/r/?page=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php(que)id=8642

ISAO OHKAWA CONFIRMED AS SEGA PRES

Sega has confirmed the swap of Ohkawa for Irimajiri at the head of Sega, although those sales figures make seriously interesting reading…

According to Nikkei, the Japanese business news service, poor domestic sales of Dreamcast are the reason for the decision, but rumour is already circulating that Ohkawa has been brought in to oversee something far more significant; such as the sale of the company.
The Japanese report also claims Irimajiri will concentrate his efforts on designing a
successor to the Dreamcast, already known to have been in development for some years.

Sega failed by around 500,000 to meet its 1.1 million Dreamcast sales target
for the second half of the year ended March. Ohkawa is to overlook the restructuring of the company, although details of what this will mean for the hardware future of Sega are still unconfirmed.

As far as the sale of Sega goes, these rumours are nothing new to the company. Microsoft is well known to have had talks with the upper echelons of the Dreamcast manufacturer in March, and fresh talk of a Sony buy-out has sprung up in recent weeks.

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Shoichiro Irimajiri, will resign from his position as president of Sega Enterprises Ltd. A representative of the company said that the main reason for Irimajiri’s resignation is due to the lackluster sales of the Dreamcast console. However, Irimajiri will stay with Sega as vice chairman, where he will contribute to the design and development of the successor to the Dreamcast console.

Isao Ohkawa, chairman of Sega, will take over for Irimajiri as president.

from our very own GA:
http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2000/5/22-115

In a surprising announcement, Sega Enterprises Ltd.'s president, Shoichiro Irimajiri, stated he would step down and take full responsibility for the financial loses that Sega has taken over the last three years.
Sega and CSK chariman, Isao Ohkawa, is set to replace Irimajiri. Rumors have it that Irimajiri will move on to design and development to the successor of the Dreamcast but Sega has declined to comment on the topic.

It is expected that Sega will announce a 44.9 billion yen ($418.6 million) loss this Friday when it announces the earnings for the fiscal year of 1999/2000 and their forcast for 2000/2001. Sega's original forecast was for a loss of 19.8 billion yen for this fiscal year.

http://zdnet.com.com/2110-11_2-520947.html

Poor sales claims Sega president

By ZDNN Staff
ZDNet News
May 21, 2000, 5:00 PM PT



The president of Sega Enterprises Ltd., Shoichiro Irimajiri, has been reassigned and is now vice chairman, according to an Associated Press report. Irimajiri will concentrate on design and development of a successor game system, the AP said, and Sega Chairman Isao Akawa will assume day-to-day responsibilities of running the company. Company officials in the United States said they could not confirm the report. Lagging sales of Dreamcast game consoles had contributed to three successive years of annual losses for the company. -- Richard Shim, ZDNet News

okay, and obviously there are many more reports mentioning that Sega was working on a new system and that Irimajiri was heading up that effort, way too many to post, most likely.


I ask the good folks in the GAF community, are they're any details whatsoever on the follow-up to Dreamcast that will never be?

edit: oh lookie!

http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2000/6/12-69

Brief: Some very interesting plans may be in the works at Sega. Including Dreamcast 2.

The Asian Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sega is in talks to license Dreamcast technology to other companies. Also, Sega is negotiating with various semiconductor companies to to form a joint venture that would build an advanced chip to power the next incarnation of the Dreamcast, as well as other devices. The JV could open as soon as October of this year.
"The future game box will be an all-in-one, set-top box," Sega Vice Chairman Shoichiro Irimajiri said in a telephone interview. "In that case, Sega's role is one part of many functions, so we cannot do it alone. We need very good alliances or a joint venture."

Apparently, Sega is already talking to potential licensees, including automobile companies, hardware makers, and satellite-television and cable-TV providers. These talks have been confirmed by Mr. Irimajiri.

The AWSJ reports that Mr. Irimajiri traveled last week to the U.S. and this week to Europe, to meet with up to 15 companies to discuss Sega's plan. He emphasized that the discussions are preliminary and he declined to identify the companies involved. "Everything is still unclear," he said. It looks like Sega is approaching NEC Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Philips Electronics NV; chip maker STMicroelectronics NV, who is making their own next generation graphics chip based on the PowerVR technology that powers the Dreamcast, and Imagination Technologies, the Company behind the PowerVR technology itself.

According to the AWSJ, officials at NEC, Hitachi and Imagination Technologies declined to comment. A spokesman at Philips said the executives he contacted were unaware of any talks with Sega. Officials at STMicroelectronics couldn't be reached for comment.

Chip makers are the likely partners because Sega hopes to build a complex processor for use in Internet appliances, the people familiar with the plans said. Sega appears to be looking to put many functions of a game machine onto one piece of silicon, making it easy to integrate advanced computer graphics into other products.

Also, in reference to the free Dreamcast plan "If our intuition is right Sega will be the dominant force in the narrowband Internet world," Mr. Irimajiri said in the report. It was also stated that he believes broadband won't be widely available until 2005

very interesting IMO.

sadly, there will be no room for a new Sega console, or even a Sega backed console, with Xenon, Revolution and PS3 together filling any roll that a Dreamcast follow-up would have played.

 

[DDayton]

sadly, there will be no room for a new Sega console, or even a Sega backed console, with Xenon, Revolution and PS3 together filling any roll that a Dreamcast follow-up would have played.

... unless Panasonic, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, EA, SquareEnix, Konami, NEC, and Sega all team up to form the GAMING MAFIA (tm) and create a standard gaming console platform.

Or not.

 

[BreakyBoy]

... unless Panasonic, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, EA, SquareEnix, Konami, NEC, and Sega all team up to form the GAMING MAFIA (tm) and create a standard gaming console platform.

Or not.

Take EA out of that team, have them swallow up all the major western developers (Blizzard, Rockstar, Bungie, Valve, id, etc etc etc) and make it:

EA Super Conglomerate "This is THE game" machine vs. Japan's SUPER HAPPY FUN WAI-WAI RAINBOW machine

Did anyone else expect World War III to go down in any other way?

Edit: Oh and sign me up as a merc for the japanese.

 

[luxsol]

EA with western developers and Nintendo with eastern developers = AWESOME TO THE MAX.

... not that i care about EA, but the rivalries that spring up with the game fans would be hilarious.

 

[Lazy8s]

When SEGA was still projecting to stay in hardware for the full generation and on, they said their plan was to release the follow-up to DC around the time of the PS3.

 

[xexex]

When SEGA was still projecting to stay in hardware for the full generation and on, they said their plan was to release the follow-up to DC around the time of the PS3

I remember that. a Segasoft guy said something to that effect.

 

[DopeyFish]

I remember that. a Segasoft guy said something to that effect.

I wouldn't trust anything a Segasoft dude says. Especially since Segasoft was the SEGA PC development team (formerly that is, and mainly for the HEAT.NET service). They had almost nothing to do with consoles besides compilations.

 

[Grifter]

Did Segasoft/heat.net ever make money? Serious question, they were always under the radar releasing questionable software so I don't know.

 

[xexex]

I wouldn't trust anything a Segasoft dude says. Especially since Segasoft was the SEGA PC development team (formerly that is, and mainly for the HEAT.NET service). They had almost nothing to do with consoles besides compilations.

I'm not basing Dreamcast's sucessor on what some Segasoft guy said. that was just an additional comment. Obviously we would have looked to what SoJ was saying and doing, which was the main thrust.