Since Sega introduced the Mega Drive mini a few years ago, many users, myself included, have dreamed of the possibility of a Japanese company launching Mini cast of dreams. There has also been speculation about a possible mini Saturn and the truth is that Sega has always been open and receptive to both projects, but He never confirmed them.
With the announcement of the Mega Drive 2 mini, this problem came to the fore and Sega maintained the same attitude as always. What really prevents Japanese companies, what prevents them from launching the Dreamcast mini? In an interview with the famous Famitsu magazine, the classic hardware manufacturer of Sega, Yosuke Okunari, He explained that the main obstacle is high production costs.
Yes, you read correctly, the CEO said that due to the impact of COVID-19, the development of new platforms has stopped and that the total cost of the components needed to create the Dreamcast mini would be “quite tall”. I understand that we are not in an ideal situation due to the high price that semiconductors and other basic components have reached for the technology industry, but it is a little difficult for me to understand the explanation that Okunari gave.
The Dreamcast mini wouldn’t need very powerful hardware


And the main reason is the one I just gave you. The Dreamcast mini would start with the same model as the Mega Drive mini, meaning it would use the emulator to move the system and games to the original console. If we look at the requirements that emulators have This console for Android, such as Reicast, we have very modest requirements:
- 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor.
- GPU Mali 400 or equivalent.
- 512 MB RAM.
Mega Drive mini is equipped with a ZUIKI Z7213 chip with a CPU quad-core Cortex-A7 at 1.3 GHz, has a Mali-400 GPU and 256 MB RAM. As we can see, there is not much difference between the silicon of this console and what we would need to build a fully functional Dreamcast mini based on the Reicast emulator. It is clear that installing a CPU based on the Cortex-A9 architecture and doubling the RAM would increase costs, but it should be minimal.
Where there could be a problem, there is storage, and I think that’s what Okunari’s concern really stems from. You have to think so The Dreamcast used a 1 GB CD, and some games used several of these discs. Of course, to create an interesting and attractive game catalog, Dreamcast mini would have to have at least more than 20 games.
Based on an average of 1.25 GB of space occupied per game, Sega would need 32 GB of storage to hold 25 games and a console operating system, a number that could represent a significant increase in production costs, although again it is worth wondering if it would actually be as serious as Sega increases. Since the PS1 mini classic has 16 GB of storage capacity and 1 GB of RAM, I think the question answers on its own.