Sources close to Atair claim that Atari have a new peripheral under development
for the whole Jaguar family. They claim that since Atari invested in IoMega
last year, a secret project has been under-way to produce a budget Zip-Drive
suitable for the Jaguar. The move is believed to be intended to counter
Nintendo's imminent release of the Nintendo 64 DD, a 64Mb capacity rewriteable
drive which Nintendo claim will revolutionise gaming by making possible
substantial game upgrades over the internet, and also allowing massively
changeable worlds.
Jaguar owners who have invested in Atari's "Jag-Store" product may be less
pleased to find that their 1.44Mb floppy drives suitable only for backing-up
game data, loading small "season data" upgrades to Jaguar games, and of course
the multitude of underground games, are now to be replaced by a new drive
storing 100Mb or more.
!NEW! Jaguar 128 (AKA Puma) !NO!
The Jaguar/2 64 has only been released for a few months and yet already there
is talk about a new machine under development at Atari. The Jaguar 64 took
3 years to develop in Atari's Research and Development facility, so it is
quite natural that Atari should have some work in progress to create the
next-generation platform. Sources close to Atari claim, however, that in
this case there is more to the Jaguar 128 project than just prototype
development.
The system may be released late next year as an arcade technology, and only
in 2-3 years time when even the Jaguar/2 64 technology is under pressure
will it be released as the Atari "Puma", the Puma being the fastest animal
on Earth. The Puma will be based on a 128-bit bus, with dual 64-bit Jaguar/2
style GPU/DSP/Object-Processor combinations residing on each half of the
64-bit bus running at around 120 Mhz, over 4 times the original Jaguar 64
bus speed, and 3 times the speed of the intended Jaguar 64 bus speed. The
system will also allow each "system" to use either half of the bus on a dynamic
basis, with a 128-bit blitter, a refinement of the 64-bit blitter in the
Jaguar/2, sitting astride the entire bus. A 68000 I/O processor will allow
backward compatability with the Jaguar 64 family.
The Puma system is expected to feature a DVD drive and 8Mb of SDRAM when
it is released as an arcade platform. The "main" CPU is yet to be decided,
apparently, with Atari considering the Cyrix Media/GX chip in order to help
Intel programmers migrate. This plan would also allow the Puma to offer PC
compatibility if required. More information on system performance will be
released as soon as possible!
Atari to release a LYNX/64 Jaguar Portable.
At the recent E3 trade show, Atari's Sam Tramiel was overheard talking to
a distributor about a secret new product, the LYNX 64. It is not known if
this is an imminent product or simply a development proposal, but some sources
close to Atari have been claiming for some time that Atari had a new portable
machine on the drawing board, and that it would be Jaguar compatible. It
seems that that Jaguar portable may well be marketed as LYNX 64 to take advantage
of the LYNX name. LYNX is the leading portable video-gaming product, out-selling
all other portable products at this time.
Sony to Pull-Out of Console Market!
Industry watchers were this week spectulating over the future of the Sony
Playstation, dubbed the "Praystation" by market analysts due to persistently
poor sales. The machine, launched amid a massive advertising campaign has
failed to attract the interest of consumers in the same way that previous
Sony products have. Sony insiders are already admitting it may be Sony's
second Betamax platform. (Betamax was Sony's technologically superior
video-cassette format which lost out to the cheaper and better supported
VHS format.) Sony's US and European developers were called to a high-level
meeting with Sony executives in Japan this week, and unofficial sources claimed
that the mood was one of pessimism. Sony did have a deal with Nintendo, the
Playstation being the bastard off-spring from that arrangement. Sony are
not afraid to drop unsuccessful products, the Sony-Nintendo machine being
one example. This time though Sony may just write the whole project down
to experience, but never count Sony out.
JustClaws
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