Sega is hesitant with a Dreamcast mini because it would be expensive to make
Since Sega released the Mega Drive small a few years back, many users, like myself, had hoped that the Japanese corporation would release a Dreamcast tiny. There has also been talked of a Saturn small, and the fact is that Sega has always been open to both projects but has never confirmed either.
With the launch of the Mega Drive 2 small, this problem resurfaced, and Sega maintained its usual stance. What is truly holding the Japanese business back from releasing a Dreamcast mini? Yosuke Okunari, Sega's classic hardware producer, revealed in an interview with the well-known Famitsu magazine that the biggest impediment is the high production costs.
Yes, you read that correctly: the executive stated that the impact of COVID-19 has slowed the development of new platforms and that the overall cost of the components required to produce a Dreamcast small would be "very significant."
A Dreamcast tiny would follow in the footsteps of the Mega Drive Mini, in that it would employ an emulator to transfer the system and games from the original machine. When we look at the requirements that emulators have for this console for Android, such as Reicast, we see that they are relatively low:
- Dual-Core Cortex-A9 1.2GHz CPU.
- GPU Mali 400 or equivalent.
- 512MB of RAM.
A ZUIKI Z7213 chip with a 1.3 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, a Mali-400 GPU, and 256 MB of RAM powers the Mega Drive mini. As we can see, there isn't much of a difference between this console's silicon and what we'd need to make a fully functional Dreamcast micro based on the Reicast emulator. It is obvious that installing a Cortex-A9 CPU and doubling the RAM would increase prices, but this should be minimal.
Storage could be an issue and we believe that is where Okunari's fear stems from. You have to consider that the Dreamcast used 1 GB of CDs and that some games required multiple discs. It goes without saying that a Dreamcast micro would need to contain at least 20 titles to have an engaging and appealing game catalog.
Starting with an average of 1.25 GB of space occupied per game, Sega would require 32 GB of storage to fit 25 games and the console's operating system, a figure that could represent a significant increase in manufacturing costs, though it is worth questioning whether it is truly as serious as Sega claims. Given that the PS1 mini classic has 16 GB of storage and 1 GB of RAM, we believe the question is self-explanatory.
