Articles By Bumper

At it Sony and Bleem go again...

In a press release today released by Bleem, Inc., Bleem! has filed a motion to the US District Court for the Northern District of California blaming Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) for interfering with the marketing and sales of Bleem's new product, "Bleem! For Dreamcast". The motion filed accused SCEA of unlawfully using its market power to strong-arm retailers via threats of legal action and harm to their business dealings with the company. The motion claims that as a result of Sony?s coercion, Babbages stopped distribution of Bleemcast to its stores and asked to return nearly all of its 7,000-unit initial order. "Sony has already asked the judge to pull bleem! from the market in three separate motions, and each time, they?ve lost," stated David Herpolsheimer, president and CEO of Bleem. "This is nothing more than an end-run around the justice system ? Sony is using its huge market power to force retailers into giving them what the courts won?t."

Released on May 2 of this year, Bleem claims that when Electronics Boutique initially carried bleem! for Dreamcast, it sold out of its 11,000 units in barely a week. It quickly became the number-one best-selling product across all gaming platforms on the ebgames.com website, outselling even the highly-anticipated Gran Turismo 3 title and the PlayStation 2 console. However, Bleem claims that pressure from Sony halted reorders and Bleemcast! was temporarily removed from the site. We have yet to get a comment from SCEA, though hopefully we'll be able to speak with someone at SCEA about Bleem's claims later on this week. Stay tuned for more.

And next, on Springer, game companies that'll never stop fighting...

Credit: DCIGN

There just might be some hell to pay for this...

It has been confirmed that Sega has dropped Black & White from its release schedule, no doubt to the surprise and anger of many DC owners - especially when an Xbox version is tipped to already be in the works.

"Unless we can find another publisher this is unlikely to happen," a spokeswoman for developer Lionhead Studios told FGN Online. As soon as we have any further news, we'll let you know.

Credit: FGN Online

Gaming Age just posted some excellent new movies of Sega arcade games! Click here to get to them.

Credit: Gaming Age

Sega had better hope the news is better next year...

As expected, Sega reported a record net loss in its past fiscal year ended March 31, hit by a hefty charge from scrapping inventories of its loss-making Dreamcast, Reuters reports.

The company posted a loss of about $421.9 million for the year, compared to last year's loss of about $349.5 million. Sales dropped 28 percent to about $1.9 billion.

Sega's poor year marks its fourth loss in a row. However, the company's CEO Shunichi Nakamura said Sega expect to make a small profit of about $17 million in this fiscal year, thanks in large part to it focusing on software for other platforms.

Maybe there IS a little light at the end of the tunnel as far as Sega's financial woes go.

Credit: Gamers.com

Well, well... looks like Sega is taking out the DC and is becoming a developer. Below is more on this breaking story.

Yahoo! Japan News has a report from the Jiji Tsushin (sort of like a Japanese version of the Associated Press) that confirms what many have been expecting: Sega, after battering losses and dwindling Dreamcast market support, will soon begin creating software on the PlayStation 2 platform. According to Jiji, this move is part of a massive company restructuring that will be officially announced before the end of the month. Development for Microsoft's Xbox will also reportedly come under consideration.

When asked for a comment, Heather Hawkins, Marketing Communications Manager for Sega of America, replied, "Our official stance is to not comment on rumors. These are just more of the same [rumors] that have been floating around for a while."

Rumors of imminent earth-shattering events at Sega have run wild for several weeks now -- Sega had to deny that Nintendo was going to buy them after a year-end New York Times report alleged that negotiations were underway. News of Sega's PS2 support had popped up on Japanese game-news sites early Monday, but Jiji is the first reliable source to divulge the info.

And then, later in the day, this was reported...

According to the Nikkei, Sega of Japan will not only make software for other systems, such as the PlayStation 2 and the Game Boy Advance, but also will cease all production of the Dreamcast console by the end of March. Sega will market the machine through fiscal 2001, but will stop once inventory is thoroughly depleted. Despite ceasing production, Sega still will support the system with software in 2001, and expects to release around 100 titles throughout the year (presumably first-and second-party titles). This report also provides more information on Sega's plans to develop for other consoles. The company is reported to have at least five titles in development for the PlayStation 2 and two titles for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, which launches on March 21 in Japan.

Earlier today, Sega of America Marketing Communications Manager Heather Hawkins told us, "Our stance is to not comment on rumors. These are just more of the same [rumors] that have been floating around for a while." But with multiple reliable Japanese news sources (like Yahoo! Japan, Jiji, Nihon Keizai Shimbun and Nikkei), it seems irrefutable that Sega is indeed abandoning the hardware market and changing its strategy to a multiplatform software approach.

Sega of America will have a more official statement for the press later today. We'll keep you posted.

Well, this is big news, and will soon get much reaction after Sega releases their official statement...

Credit:Gamers.com

Click here to see the cover.

And here we are, the link above to the cover, and below, the plot, as describes by Worlds of Westfield.

Enemy Mine. A trip to Robotropolis to rescue the roboticized Overlanders baffles Sonic and Bunnie, as many of the Overlanders haven't even been roboticized.

There you go. Enjoy, folks.

Credit: Worlds of Westfield

Click here to see the cover

This is the color cover for Sonic 94. Plot as described by Westfield...

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #94 - (Bollers/Fry/Pepoy) New Order 2. As beautiful as the new Knothole Village is, Sonic just can't adjust to knowing that Robotnik's presence persists in Robotropolis.

Credit: Worlds of Westfield

Thanks a lot to Evil Blackfox on the forum for showing this...

Sega announces worldwide agreement with NexGen Software

Sega Dreamcast Game Consoles powered by NexGenIP TCP/IP suite, allows thousands of players to play together around the world

Sega Europe is pleased to announce the newly acquired license for NexGenIP, a complete embedded TCP/IP stack developed by French based company NexGen Software. This license will allow Dreamcast developers to access a Complete Networking Suite to design better online Games.

?Our objective was to offer our developers one of the most complete embedded TCP-IP stack which is perfectly tuned to exploit our optimised architecture?, said Serge Plagnol, Associate Director for Developers Technical Support at SEGA Europe. ?We worked closely with NexGen Software, to deliver arguably the best Internet based game software solution for a console available today? concluded Plagnol.

?The relationship established with SEGA gave us a deep understanding about the technical issues and we enjoyed working closely with them. While our TCP/IP stack is very carefully layered, we met the challenge to optimise some of our code in order to exploit the advanced Dreamcast architecture. The resulting port is probably the best one we have done, improving both the portability and performance? said Jean-Paul Medina, President at NexGen Software.

NexGenIP Open Embedded TCP/IP Suite is carefully designed to solve the most demanding requirements in terms of size, performances and portability. All dependencies are well isolated in the NexGenOS Interface Layer to support most of the popular Polling or Real Time Operating Systems.

From SegaWeb...

Speaking of Capcom and army of robot developers, the company has announced they'll be offering the chance to snatch up some stock. Beginning October 4, 4.7 million shares of previously privately held Capcom stock will be available on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The price of the stock is expected to be announced sometime between October 2 and October 6.

Credit: SegaWeb News Bytes

That's what the biggest rumor to come down the pike in ages is saying. This comes from SegaWeb...

Holy just so wacky it might be true, Batman! A rumor has surfaced indicating Sega is teaming up with none other than Nintendo to create a new cross-platform game. Featuring characters like Sonic, Mario, Link, Virtua Fighter Kids, and more in an RPG-style outing, the game will see release on both the Dreamcast and GameCube. The game (tentatively titled "Sega and Nintendo: The Cosmo Cube") is supposed to be officially announced in November. Ah, so that's when Hell is going to freeze over. Thanks to The Magic Box for the scoop.

Remember folks, and take THIS to heart; THIS IS IS JUST A RUMOR! It may or may not be true, but it's certainly very intriguing, is it not.....

Credit: SegaWeb News Bytes