Daytona Live | The mysteriously announced Daytona game scheduled for Xbox

Finally. after over 15 years Sega decides to make a third entry into the beloved Daytona franchise. However at some point near the Dreamcast's demise, there were talks about a third game hitting the arcades and the 6th generation of consoles. So I was digging through old websites on the Way Back Machine and I came across a particular article on GamesAsaylum that caught my eye. The report was from 14th of October 2002 with the following details about an upcoming Daytona title:

Daytoooona

Yu Suzuki and his band of merry men are working away on Daytona Live (that's a working title, working title fans) - an Xbox Live compatible instalment of the popular arcade racing series. Although the game
will be an Xbox exclusive at first, PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions are also on the cards. Cross-platform online play is also a possibility, and a lovely sounding possibility at that.

Oddly enough this was the first time I've heard of this. So I decided to do some digging using various search terms like "Daytona Live", "Daytona 3", "Daytona Xbox" etc. I found nothing and I did the same list of searches again through 2001 to 2003 to find nothing except for one by IGN on the 30th January 2001. Here's what they had to say:

Sega Gives Glimpse at Future of Dreamcast Software

Daytona 3 - We're not to sure if this is a new title, or if Sega was referring to Daytona Online, but we asked twice, and both times they said "yes, Daytona 3. Ooh, baby!

So this was official from Sega themselves published on a major gaming website and a year and a half prior to the GamesAsaylum's post. Now information here on in gets very sparse but after much digging I found an interesting post on the Sega forum dating back to May 2006 containing an interesting number of links. First of which was two links from a defunct website named Casbox and one from the still active UK site Spong. The first article from Casbox is actually viewable in the way back machine as far back as 7th of December 2002 (so the article could be older) and states the following:

Daytona USA 2003 (Naomi 2 - Amusement Vision)

A big thanks to a number of web sources and some very informative leaks from key Japanese R&D facilities. The news comes at a time when many were living in a state of depression weather we would see anything worthwhile from the video amusement factories. The news is a big lung full of fresh air, and from initial site reports of certain systems on test very good news with strong player support.

The Stinger REPORT would as always like to thank those that have supplied information or pointed our contributors to sites that have contained valuable information that has been compiled into a comprehensive REPORT below:

Daytona USA 2003 - Little information other than the game is on the horizon, and that it will hope to build heavily off of SEGA's plans for a network tournament system, which could see players on home and arcade systems competing in real-time via a very fast 'Live' connection server.

The next Casbox article is also archived as far back as the 24th of December 2002. Furthermore the article was also posted on Neogaf and on The Magic Box Forum which meant it was somewhat known at the time in gaming circles. Here is what they had to say:

Next Daytona on the Grid!

The lack of a strong International driver, especially in a market hungry for new products, is a sorry state. To retrofire this situation SEGA have been hinting at a number of new developments on the horizon. In particular one major new development.

The Yu Suzuki managed AM2 team has revealed that they are working on Daytona 3 (tentatively name Daytona Live). The game is targeted squarely at the Xbox console and its 'Xbox Live' network playing system. The company hopes to develop a racing game that will be truly 'multiple platform' with players on one system able to compete across a newly developed network system with players on another unit in LAN games. This announcement is hoped to steal some of the wind that the Taito Network Entrance SYStem (NESYS) caused at JAMMA.

Regarding amusement application of Daytona 3, especially in light of other SEGA sequels missing arcade development (Ferrari F355 Championship 2, Crazy Taxi 2 and Monkey Ball 2) no official statement has been made on a release date for a arcade version, though a late 2003 date has been intimated for the Xbox version. 

From sources that revealed the Daytona information, additional news has emerged that SEGA's main R&D effort for future content will predominately surround driving applications, with news revealed of a number or prominent F1 based licenses and marketing agreements which could see an F1 title for amusement and console application readied for a mid-2003 preview. At the same time an arcade SEGA Rally 3 has been hinted at; the game is being developed for console application, (but this time for the PS2), linked to the LAN project, the possibility of an arcade/console live network is a tantalizing rumor.

Unfortunately this Spong article is also no longer viewable with an error message appearing on their site. As mentioned previously, both the aforementioned Neogaf and The Magic Box Forum posts have both pasted identical information in regards to this Spong article meaning we have some way of reading what was once posted. So here is the article from the 14th October 2002.

World Exclusive: Daytona 3 to Launch on Xbox Live

AM2 racer sequel in the works for Microsoft.

We can exclusively reveal that the next instalment of Daytona, AM2’s acclaimed racing series, will be released exclusively for Xbox and will have a heavy online slant. This thrilling news comes as the last instalment of Daytona, released for Dreamcast, had its online support withdrawn around the world. Yu Suzuki’s team is already hard at work on the game, which is currently carrying the name Daytona Live, though this is likely to change. We can also tell you that Sega and Microsoft are working to release the game in mid-2003 to late 2003. Although the game will initially be an Xbox exclusive, a PlayStation 2 version and a GameCube version will follow. It is known that Sega is looking into the possibility of implementing cross-platform online racing as part of its console agnostic online stance. The content of Daytona is expected to be a much enhanced version of previous games, with a load of new tracks, several old favourites and fully customisable cars, with players able to design and re-design their racer’s shell.

So here's my understanding on what has happened. Casbox was a small website known for its coverage on the arcade business within Japan and was subscription based where you would recieve news a month prior to the public. Casbox ran a segment called the "Stinger Report" which specified in rumours and leaked information in relation to the arcade business. One such leak (as seen above), was the prediction of a third Sega Rally game with network focused features to release exclusively on the PS2. As we know this was spot on with Sega Rally 2006 releasing exclusively on PS2 in Japan in 2006; three and a half years after the article was posted. What follows is that these smaller websites such as Spong and GamesAsaylum have jumped on this information whereas large scale websites were probably not willing to report on rumours from a relatively unknown website.

However what conflicts with this theory is that Spong does reveal a "world exclusive" information dump of unique information. While Spong has a track record of being hit or miss with their reports, their exclusive information seems plausible. Sega had only had just recently released Daytona USA 2001 just under 2 years ago and factor that in with Sega's dire financial situation, it's definitely believable that it would be using a modified version of the existing game. Unfortunately the Casbox articles have no dates making it difficult to see whether Spong or Casbox were the first ones to report on the title.

It's unclear how far development got with Daytona Live or it ever even passed concept. It's clear that initially its existence was known as 'Daytona 3' as seen in the early IGN article before being named Daytona Live. The game sounded interesting and Sega really seemed keen on pushing the online capabilities of the 6th gen consoles with Microsoft being at the forefront due to Xbox Live. Cross play between all three consoles and arcades via "newly developed network systems" seems awfully ambitious. It's most likely the tech just wasn't there or was too expensive to implement to continue. If we are to believe that the game was allegedly a heavily enhanced version of older games, Sega probably didn't see much point re-releasing a modified version of an older title with basic online.

Understandably it seems like Sega wanted to push the boundaries of online and Daytona would be the game to do it, but as plans fell through, development quietly halted. Sadly the only form of Datyona Xbox owners got was the special tracks featured in Outrun 2. 

Links:

• http://uk.ign.com/articles/2001/01/31/sega-gives-glimpse-at-future-of-dreamcast-software
• http://www.the-magicbox.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12934&goto=nextnewest
• http://forums.sega.com/archive/index.php/t-62406.html?s=98ceb08f69fad66c29c71c765c35d4fa 
• http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5640404 (post #96)
• http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2007/07/why_you_should_subscribe_to_th.php 

Archived Links:

• http://www.casbox.com/Stinger/Sting104.html 
• http://news.spong.com/article/3877