Project DIVA Arcade Future Tone To Feature New Sega Arcade Hardware “Nu”

I know for some Sega fans, hearing new hardware and Sega in a sentence may sound like link trolling.  We’re not here to bait with fantasies of a Dreamcast 2 but in the world of arcades, Sega still needs something to power their arcade games with, topped off with fancy names for the configurations likeLindbergh or Europa.

For a while now those configurations have been based on PCs. The last time something was built from a non-PC source at Sega was the Atomiswave board, which was based on the Dreamcast(launched under the Sammy name. It was in fact, less powerful than the NAOMI, as it eschewed the extra RAM that NAOMI had). Other boards up to the most recent Ringedge 2 have been PC-based.

The RingEdge 2 was quietly unveiled not long ago and has primarily been used for their ALL.NET Pras-Multi network in Japan. Big games like Guilty Gear Xrd are going to be using it, I believe that the new Transformers game will be too although that is unconfirmed for now. Today at a special “private event” in Japan, Sega has unveiled the newest arcade board that they are calling “Nu”. It will power their upcomingProject DIVA Arcade Future Tone game. Let me emphasize once again, since there was a small problem in the past on this subject, this is not a new game console prototype or anything like that. It’s just sticking to the arcade world to power some of Sega’s latest titles.

UPDATE: Famitsu reports that Microsoft Japan has endorsed the board, since it uses Windows 8 Embedded and Direct X11.1. The Famitsu report also covers how Sega plans on using this board to power various next generation arcade titles and handle their ALL.NET+ needs. Perhaps the strangest omission from the specifications has to be an HDMI port – instead they are sticking with DVI. Best guess is so that they keep the audio on separate cables but no reason both can’t be used. We probably won’t hear about this being used in Western arcade releases until 2014 though.

AM-Net captured a shot of the spec sheet in Japanese. This is also a PC-based unit running on Windows 8 Embedded and will have ALL.NET capability. It uses an Intel Core i3-3220 processor, 4GB DDR3 PC-12600 RAM, an nVidia GTX650 Ti graphics card with 1GB of Video RAM,  and a combination of a 64GB SSD hard drive and a standard SATA 500GB hard drive for storage (I assume the OS stuff is kept on the SSD, game data on the 500GB). It’s not the highest resolution pic but here you go:

According to this, the game will be launched in November. We’ll have to wait and see what other games will use the hardware although its looking like this may be spelling the end for the RingWide hardware, which has been used in several games Sega has done for the US so far (Giant Tetris, Dream Raiders, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Arcade). It wasn’t a particularly strong graphics powerhouse so that will be a welcome change. Here’s a video of the upcoming Project DIVA Arcade Future Tone (also an AH post I wrote up about it in May) in case you are curious about that title.

IA (Vocaloid 3)

IA (イア) is a Japanese VOCALOID developed and distributed by 1st Place Co., Ltd., and was released in January 2012 for the first VOCALOID3 engine. Her voice is provided by the Japanese female singer, Lia, known for "Tori no Uta". This song was written by Jun Maeda and used for the opening theme of the visual novel, Air.

AVANNA (Vocaloid 3)

AVANNA is an English VOCALOID developed and distributed byZero-G Limited, and was released in December 2012 for theVOCALOID3 engine. Her voice is provided by the Irish female singer, Rachel.

Concept

AVANNA was designed to be a soft voice with a "Celtic twist" to it. AVANNA is 18 years old, female, and her artist has stated that AVANNA herself is of Irish descent. According to the artist, in AVANNA's early concept design, her height was 5'6" and her weight was 156 lbs. The artist had stated that in her final design, her weight is around 110 lbs. Again, it should be noted that these are just personal preferences of the artist and not official by any means.

Etymology

While it is unknown why Zero-G chose this name, according to the name's origins, "Avanna," is a combination of the old English word "Ava," meaning "breath of life," and the Latin name "Anna," meaning "gracious." This results in the implied meaning of her name being "gracious breath of life."^[1]

Appearance

Zero-G themselves asked for a fantasy-based look for her.^[2]According to EmpathP, the model for AVANNA's body figure was her own sister, who was particularly curvy.^[3]

AVANNA was originally designed to be an elf, but this was scrapped when she had to be re-designed upon Yamaha's request, even though a faded version of this design can still be seen on the final boxart. The artist, EmpathP, has stated that fans can draw her with elf ears if they wish to do so,^[4] and upon request has also uploaded her version with the elf ears.^[5]

During the process of her design, even though alternate colors where considered, Zero-G specifically asked for AVANNA to have black hair. According to EmpathP, the reason why her hair was lengthened was because she was requested to make her look more feminine.^[6]

AVANNA’s outfit was inspired by Roman-Britannia. Specifically, the Celts received Roman influence during the first century of Britannia’s occupation by the Roman Empire. The little flower shapes worked into AVANNA’s outfit are clovers, hinting at her Irish heritage. The rings around AVANNA's waist float/spin with the power of her voice, but will stay motionless when she is not singing. The gems on her skirt and the rings she is depicted with were inspired by blue topaz gemstones.

PjDF2nd Release Date, New songs and video [UPDATE Dec. 24]

http://www.projectdiva.net/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=844