"Revolutionary" Announcement related to SEGA coming on June 4th

[Wraith]

I don't know if we can play halo on this one gang
 

 

[JosepHenry]

@Wrapped in Black maybe with the power of hacking we can play 

[SonicWind]

I'm pretty sure I'd need a magnifying glass to see the screen on this thing if it's really this small.

Jokes aside, part of me doesn't think this is what's being teased in the Famitsu issue. It's only the 3rd in Japan.

[SonicLegends]

Just now, SonicWind said:

I'm pretty sure I'd need a magnifying glass to see the screen on this thing if it's really this small.

That said, part of me doesn't think this is what's being teased in the Famitsu issue. It's still the 3rd in Japan.

If it is then what an amazing announcement! Sega taking a page from Nintendo and their Gameboy Micro, just what a stellar idea! I'm sure it will meet expectations and sale farther than they expected. 

Spoiler

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

So SEGA was making a prop for Ant Man 3?

[Wildcat]

I want one. Hope it includes all GG Sonics as well as a good assortment of others.

The original battery life was awful so I’m glad they did something like this.

Sure it’s tiny but it’s cool. Would be awesome if it includes a tv connection. No reason it can’t but it might not.

[Marcello]

It doesn't look enjoyable to play on. Even as a kid I had problems with the GB Micro and this is smaller and I'm bigger

[CleverSonicUsername]

Wow I was wrong turns out it was hardware. 

 

[Dejimon11]

 

Actually nah I'm good 

[KHCast]

Is Sega gonna take the Nintendo approach and intentionally limit production to create artificial scarcity to hype it and have people rushing to buy and scalp these I wonder

[Wraith]

Thank god they decided to be generous.

[Wildcat]

Now that’s very disappointing. I don’t understand the point now. Unless they allowed adding files.

[Remy]

this thing is certified WHACK.

 

still gonna get one

[Plumbers_Helper]

It may be over 15 years old, but I'll stick with my Coleco Sonic.

[FReaK]

I honestly dont think that this is the big revolutionary announcement. Still neat tho.

[CleverSonicUsername]

1 hour ago, Dejimon11 said:

 

Actually nah I'm good 

Oh word, it has the Shining Force games? Not being able to read any of the text in those sounds like it'll whip ass.

[Blue Blood]

how am i supposed to fit six AA batteries in this thing

 

And as far as pricing goes...

 

I love the idea of this system, but it doesn't look like anythign other than a cute novelty. And considering the price of of it along with the facts that there are four separate units and that each only hs four games... yeah no.

 

Anyway, the real big news? Don't get too excited.  It's a type of cloud-based service for Arcades.  Or in this case it's actually "fog-based".

 

Quote

Will it be a new game platform from Japan? SEGA is researching and developing "fog gaming" *Title correction

 

Roughly from Famitsu's latest issue, Zenji Nishikawa's column

 

・Use game centers nationwide as cloud.

・Divert or divert the CPU and GPU of game consoles at game arcades. = Cost reduction.

Ultra-low-latency

, fog competent computing in the near ideas

and high-quality game to enjoy

earn money even outside office hours for the Game Center

This guy explains it more clearly:

 

So it's potentially a big thing for Japan and could rile-up the industry a bit in Japan... but revolutionary and on the scale of the PS5 news this it is not. I'm glad that I didn't over-hype this. It was only ever being teased by one journalist for Famitsu, whilst SEGA themselves didn't say a word. It was obviously not going to be amazing. But I'm still surprised that the journalist had the gall to compare it to the PS5 news. It's just not on that level at all.

[Sonicka]

Right, so the GG Micro is essentially just a cheap and cute gimmick? Fair enough. Those screens are ridiculously small to play anything unless you’re like, 4-5 years old. 

Considering there are also different versions to obtain it can’t be overly expensive I imagine. In this sense it seems comparable as a modern day version of the “Tiger Electronics” or “Game & Watch” handheld series of portables from the 90’s if anything. 

[Blue Blood]

2 minutes ago, Son-icka said:

Right, so the GG Micro is essentially just a cheap and cute gimmick? Fair enough. Those screens are ridiculously small to play anything unless you’re like, 4-5 years old. 

Considering there are also different versions to obtain it can’t be overly expensive I imagine. In this sense it seems comparable as a modern day version of the “Tiger Electronics” or “Game & Watch” handheld series of portables from the 90’s if anything. 

It costs ¥4980, roughly £36 or $46 US. It's technically the cheapest of the big-name mini-consoles, but absurdly expensive for what your actually get. As the chart in my previous post shows, in practice it costs you around $12 US or £9 per game. That's a lot of money for Game Gear titles.

[Sonicka]

2 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

It costs ¥4980, roughly £36 or $46 US. It's technically the cheapest of the big-name mini-consoles, but absurdly expensive for what your actually get. As the chart in my previous post shows, in practice it costs you around $12 US or £9 per game. That's a lot of money for Game Gear titles.

Oh my god, That is definitely overexpensive! Personally I’d pay £15... maybe £20 at most for this trinket. 
 

I find it especially hilarious that SEGA will throw in a magnifying bracket for free if you buy all 4 variants. It’s like they are admitting it is too small to play. 
 

What I don’t understand is that if they are going down this mini/micro gimmick like the consoles, why not reduce the Game Gear down to the size of something Small but comfortable... like a 1st Gen GBA,  Then just shove 50 emulated games on and sell it for £59.99. 

As cute as the little bugger is, this is such an absurd & expensive novelty

[Jango]

A child could easily swallow this, oh my god.

[Tracker_TD]

The Game Gear Mini is something I was actually down for as a silly novelty... until the 4 games thing happened. That's such a bizarre decision, and something I hope won't be the case if it gets a Western version. Such a shame.

EDIT: That said, Famitsu's interview on it clears things up a bit; 

Fog Gaming on the other hand... is terrifyingly, almost exactly what I predicted the big SEGA announcement would be; a means of SEGA leveraging their arcade business into the cloud space. It doesn't sound like it'll be just streaming the arcade games as I expected, but the key point behind it - letting arcade operators continue to earn revenue, even when they have to be closed due to operating hours or now, COVID-19, is what I expected, and I'm very down for the idea! COVID's threatened to decimate Japan's arcade scene (and across the world too), with numerous venues having to crowdfund just to stay afloat; so I'm glad SEGA's stepped up to offer some kind of solution to that. 

As big as the PS5 specs? Probably not, no, but I think it's a solid scoop. 

[Wraith]

It means nothing for us westerners but a Japanese journalist was the one hyping this up, and it seems pretty big for their particular gaming scene. I can respect that more than the MD Mini at least. 

 

I'm kind of having trouble on what it means, though. Is this supposed to pair with the touch screen patent from earlier this week? Would you be able to access their arcade games on a variety of different devices?

[Tracker_TD]

5 minutes ago, Wrapped in Black said:

It means nothing for us westerners but a Japanese journalist was the one hyping this up, and it seems pretty big for their particular gaming scene. I can respect that more than the MD Mini at least. 

 

I'm kind of having trouble on what it means, though. Is this supposed to pair with the touch screen patent from earlier this week? Would you be able to access their arcade games on a variety of different devices?

I think the idea is to basically use arcade machine hardware as computers for players to stream their games from, but I believe with lower latency than typical cloud structures due to the idea of 'fog' networking. As Gematsu words it:

Quote

Fog Gaming would repurpose arcades across Japan as part of the cloud, as well as channel arcade game machines’ CPUs and GPUs, resulting in lower costs. This would provide ultra low latency, and the concept is similar to fog computing. Players would be able to enjoy high-quality games, and arcades would be able to make money even after business hours.

I think we'll only truly understand what SEGA wants to do with it once it moves beyond R&D and into actually applying it to some kind of product, but for the arcade business I can see this being a great move, yeah. 

[Maxtiis]

What if the announcement was them making Astro City candy cabinets again lol. Would make all the retro fighting game players pretty happy.