GD-ROM - History

History

The format was developed for Sega by Yamaha. GD-ROM was created because the standard CD-ROM was prone to piracy and reaching the limits of its storage capacity, while implementing the new DVD-ROM technology would have made console production too costly (in part because royalties had to be paid to the DVD Forum). Before the Dreamcast was released Sega, "confirmed that Dreamcast owners will one day be able to upgrade the GD-ROM drive to DVD," as information indicated Sony's anticipated successor to the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, would use the DVD format with its much larger capacity 4.7 GB single-layered up to 8.7 GB double-layered discs compared to the 1.2 GB capacity of the GD-ROM. These plans never materialized during the significantly shorter production run of the Dreamcast compared to the more successful sixth generation era consoles led by Sony's PlayStation 2 which included a DVD drive out of the box. The GD-ROM format is considered one of the causes that led to the failure of the Dreamcast while the DVD compatible PlayStation 2 is still in production as of 2012, more than 10 years after Sega discontinued the Dreamcast.

GD-ROM was also made available as an upgrade for the Dreamcast's arcade cousin, Sega NAOMI and later Sega NAOMI 2, providing alternate media to its cartridge-based software. It is also used for the Sega Chihiro and Namco Triforce.