Nintendo, Sega and Namco announced today in Japan that they've started a partnership, for the development of a next-generation general purpose 3D graphics board. The three companies made an agreement back in Sptember of 2001, and never said anything about it until today.

The name of this graphics board will be Triforce Board (sounds familiar?), and the hardware will be based on Nintendo's GameCube architecture.

The press release tells us that the Triforce Boardb will have several purposes:

1. Expansion of the video game market
2. Creation of the video game software environment for software development for business whose cost performance is high
3. Proposital of a completely new game system where play between home systems and arcade is expanded

The three companies want the graphical ability of this board to become as high as the GameCube's. The Triforce Board should create a high cost performance development environment to game creators. A very interesting thing might be purpose three, that tells us that there will be interaction between the home systems and the arcade. This could be reahced through the use of the GameBoy Advanced.

At the AOU 2002 Amusement Expo at the Makuhari Messe, On February 22nd (thats right, this Friday!), Nintendo, Sega and Namco will be demonstrating a working prototype.

We'll definitely give you more details this Friday.

Source: Nintendo.co.jp/a>, Planet GameCube