![]() When 3dfx declared its Initial Public Offering in April 1997, it revealed every detail of the contract with Sega. prototype boards were silk-screened "Shark" and later "Dural". skunk works group, 11 people in a secret suite away from the Sega of America headquarters led by Tatsuo Yamamoto settled on an Hitachi SH4 processor with a 3dfx Voodoo 2 graphics processor, which was originally codenamed "Black Belt". The first Japanese prototype boards were silk-screened "Guppy", and the later ones "Katana". This was originally codenamed "White Belt". The Japanese group led by Hideki Sato settled on an Hitachi SH4 processor with a PowerVR graphics processor developed by VideoLogicand manufactured by NEC. It soon became apparent that the existing Japanese hardware group led by Hideki Sato did not want to relinquish control of the hardware department, bringing rise to two competing designs led by two different groups. When the time came to design the successor to the Sega Saturn, the new President of Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, took the unusual step of hiring an outsider, Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin, to head a "skunk works" group to develop the next-generation console. ![]() When it was announced that Sega would be discontinuing the Saturn permanently in favor of Dreamcast, many third-party developers in Japan were angered, as it meant that they were putting money into developing titles for what would soon be a dead system. At E3 1997, Stolar made public his opinion on the Saturn with his comment, "The Saturn is not our future" and referred to the doomed console as "the stillbirth". In 1997, the Saturn was struggling in North America, and Sega of America president Bernie Stolar pressed for Sega's Japanese headquarters to develop a new platform which eventually became Dreamcast. ![]()
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