SEGA Working With Nintendo and Namco on 'Triforce' Arcade Hardware

SEGA may have given up the home console race, but it's still finding ways to surprise us in the hardware scene. And this latest news may shock you - the company is going to be collaborating with Nintendo and Namco on a unique arcade board called Triforce. 

Does the name sound familiar? It's also the name of the iconic emblem that can be found in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series. And that's significant, because the hardware itself will actually be based on Gamecube architecture.

This triple-company team-up will allow for projects originally intended for the arcade to be easily ported to Nintendo's blocky home console. The stated goals are also to help bring about a 'creation of a high cost-performance game development environment' - basically meaning that producers can cut costs by working on code that can run easily across arcade and console platforms.

A working prototype was unveiled at the AOU 2002 Amusement Expo in Japan's Makuhari Messe, on 22 February. SEGA's own World Cup Champion Football Series A 2001-2002 was used as a test case - that game was made by Amusement Vision of Super Monkey Ball fame, so could this studio be one of the major players working on this? And could we see Sonic Team doing something similar soon?

Source: Cloudchaser