They started development way before Nagoshi's leave, they had leaks about them for years, and Utsumi "SEGA's CEO" talked a lot about bringing old titles back ,we are finally seeing the results
You can believe that. For me, if Nagoshi-san were still head of SEGA's creative control it would be endless Yakuza sequels and not much money for anything else. I would say I bet that's one of the reasons Ueda-san rejoined SEGA was knowing full well, that Nagoshi was leaving. COVID was a big help no doubt. Console gaming went into its own then and the promise of the Mobile gaming revolution that was meant to kill console gaming last gen never materialised and Sammy SEGA did put a few big bets on mobile gaming. I've also noticed a marked contrast in SEGA with Hajime Satomi son talking over the day to day running of SEGA, I think it was him who wanted SEGA to reboot Sakura Wars It's sad to see the Arcade side suffer a little but sill make some classics as for me SEGA Japan has always been the Arcade's but its nice to see SEGA Japan putting money into big-budget AAA console and PC games. I just wish now SEGA would bring some of their own Lightgun Arcade games to SONY's VR2. Let's Go Jungle, Too Spicy and House of the Dead Scarlet would be perfect for the format.
It’s not about me “believing” , that’s just the plain truth, i mean when Nagoshi was still in SEGA, the Yakuza studio already revived both Super Monkey Ball and Virtua Fighter 5 oh also Nagosh was the reason new Sakura Wars exists streets of rage 4 also had special thanks to Yakuza studio btw, they helped it say the light of day so it’s really weird to just pretend that Nagosh was this force that prevented other franchises from happening….when he himself allowed those revivals to happen in the first place. Ueda-san rejoind SEGA way before Nagoshi left btw, so it’s irrelevant
I would disagree. VF5 was a simple remix and SuperMonekey Ball were done on the cheap and in Unity, most rather play the Game Cube versions of Monkeyball to be honest. I would have much rather have a complete remaster of the Cube versions with online rankings and head to head multiplayer for the mini games. Nagoshi-san was the head of SEGAs creative control or what it was called and the creativity of SEGA died a death under him. I'll give him credit for the Spikeout and Yakuza but I'm glad he's gone out of SEGA, just a little sad he took Hosokawa-sand with him, but hey we got Ueda-san back so not all bad. Sure he got his fans and some SEGA fans are sorry to see him gone, but I'm not myself. Fully expect this is just the start of the new creative SEGA
Yeah Nagoshi’s run was pretty good and I have little faults with it. He clearly just wanted to go back to being more involved in development over being an executive and I can’t blame him for that. trying to twist things in a way to make it out that he would have been against this output despite these games starting under him is just odd to me.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd love to see a revival of Kid Chameleon involved in this along the way. That was such an exceptional platformer, with branching exits of to different sets of levels. Would hype me like nothing else. Of the five announced so far Jet Set has me the least excited though, so maybe I'm the wild card.
Hey all, I am a lurker in these parts. I noticed some talk about Nagoshi and I couldn't help chime in. For a while now I've felt the same way as Team Andromeda regarding him; that he only cared about RGG studio and his IPs for the most part. "But the timeline doesn't line up!" Well, yeah, that's true if you are talking about when Nagoshi left SEGA at the end of 2021. The company had already allied with Microsoft for their cloud platform, and had begun the Super Game project in earnest by then. However, I don't think Nagoshi leaving is the critical point to look at here, but rather what we should be looking at is him stepping down or getting demoted from his position as CCO at the beginning of 2021, and getting replaced by Yukio Sugino. There were several rumors and statements on why this happened (creative differences, not wanting to be in an executive position, health problems, making fun of a Puyo Puyo player, accepting unsolicited favors from another company, etc.) I won't speculate on what's real and what's not there, but all I'm saying is this: Yukio Sugino replaces him in January 2021, and then in May we get the first report on the Super Game concept, and then very quickly after they start talking about remaking/rebooting IPs en masse. The Bloomberg article from April 2022 also stated that Crazy Taxi was in the works for about a year which further lines up with this timeline. Now, let's get the caviats and disclaimers out of the way: Yes, there's a lot of speculation here. Yes, this could very easily just be coincidental, and that this initiative was mainly inspired by the Sonic movie and Nagoshi wasn't really opposed to it. There's also another side to this that maybe Nagoshi simply didn't see any success in these past IPs, and wanted SEGA to make different kinds of games. I recall him saying he felt Japan should've been the country to make a game like Ghost of Tsushima. Maybe he wanted SEGA to make those kinds of AAA games as opposed to the GAAS the Super Game project promises. It appears that sort of game is what he's gone to do at his new studio, so it's all valid counter-arguments. As far as I'm concerned, I will continue to imagine him stepping down (and eventually leaving) has indeed lead to a change in SEGA's direction, a change that seems to line up more with what I personally like to see, regardless of whether it all comes crashing down or not. I didn't provide links to all the information I talked about here (mainly out of laziness). Most of the information can be found in SEGA's financial reports or quick google searches. If anyone would like a source on some particular thing, do let me know.
Yukio Sugino has been in charge of Sega (his executive position change often within the company) since forever. It's more accurate to say Shuji Utsumi replaced Nagoshis position with a "co-COO" position replacing the CCO position of Nagoshi in 2021. He joined 2019 and found a trasure trove of IP by his words.
Yes, I believe you are correct. I mixed up some details there. Also worth mentioning that Nagoshi stepping down was announced January 2021 but "officially" the restructuring took place April 1st (The start of the next fiscal year). Utsumi is a very interesting character. He said some... "funky" sounding things regarding NFTs and blockchain. It's quite hilarious because he went from heavily supporting them initially, to calling them not fun and boring earlier this year while supporting a blockchain game called "Battle of the Three Kingdoms" at the same time. For better or for worse, he's certainly shaking things up at SEGA. At this point I highly doubt the "Super Game" project as a whole will associate with any of that blockchain stuff though
"Battle of the Three Kingdoms" is more a Yasuhiro Nishiyama project, he moved up to be a manager surrounding the NFT side of things after working on arcade games like Sangokushi Taisen (which the NFT thing is based on). I do think it's funny that Utsumi called it "simple money-making" when a good chunk of Sega's amusement business could be uncharitably described as that right now too. I find this sudden lionisation of him a bit baffling though - at the end of the day he was simply an executive during the Dreamcast days, and he just so happened to come back to Sega at around the right time for the big budget IP plundering approach to be allowed internally. The mood was probably there already. Dig slightly deeper and there is even also more to this than Utsumi joining and Nagoshi doing a runner, e.g. SegaSammy's $1 billion plans for an IR casino in Yokohama that got vetoed by the local government. Guess what they started saying they'd spend it on instead just mere weeks later? All these "Super Games".
Online opinions are having a strong influence on Sega these days. Hyenas creates no buzz? Cancelled. NFT having negative opinions? Let's stop doing it. JSR and Crazy Taxi are having bad buzz because of the GaaS like format rumors? Lets announce the IP coming back first of all, to ease people in.
I don't look to twist things. I wasn't a fan of Nagoshi-san and there were some in SEGA that felt the same I would say. Nagohsi-san was a lot like Miyamoto-san to NCL; Put their names to every game the corps were making and was far too conservative with their approach to new IP and creatively Kikuchi-san for me was the best producer at SEGA Japan and the one who really should have led SEGA's consumer teams I think we'll see a new much better SEGA Japan now that Nagosgi-san is gone myself.
I have to say I am excited to see a new SoR (and all of those announced so far) but because SoR4 exists, the excitement is rather dampened. LizardCube Shinobi should be good. I will hope for the best for all of these and the "more" to come.
I just had to mention it because I stumbled on this tweet while checking some things. The way he flip-flopped about all this was hilarious. Moving along, it seems that Komi Games is a developer on the Streets of Rage game. They're a small indie studio who has worked on a 3D fighting game before called Mighty Fight Federation. There's a striking resemblance to the Streets of Rage clips, but the latter looks a bit more up to snuff.
The fact of the matter is that both VF and SMB returned at all, it's a great way to revive interest while preparing for new games, they could have not bothered with them at all and let them stay dead, it's cheaper that way and i see that somehow Sakura Wars and SoR4 not counts, for some reason. May as well add Valkyrie Chronicles 4, the real sequel to VC1 oh and Also PSO2:NG, which is basically PSO3 in all things but name Claiming that Nagoshi somehow prevented old SEGA games from returning is straight up false. oh because SEGA kept making tons of Yakuza games? well guess what, they are STILL making tons of Yakuza games, in fact Gaiden releasing before Y8 by only 2 months is unprecedented, never 2 main yakuza games were this close to release.
According to Gematsu.com, Sega has registered trademarks for Jet Set Radio and more of their older franchises https://x.com/gematsu/status/1734992671033221391?s=46&t=S0_YkQ8TRA2Bk54XvKgWfw: Altered Beast: chizai-watch.com/t/2023134972 Eternal Champions: chizai-watch.com/t/2023134974 Jet Set Radio: chizai-watch.com/t/2023134973 Kid Chameleon: chizai-watch.com/t/2023134975
To put it bluntly I couldn't give two shits about Kid Chameleon and Eternal Champions coming back. I also somewhat suspect that same feeling goes for the vast majority of the world. But American nostalgia money talks. Also before people assume otherwise, it's possible they've more renewed those trademarks for multimedia efforts outside games - Space Channel 5 and Comix Zone had theirs refiled around the same time it was announced that they had feature films planned. In a way I would be happy if these were just for some licenced comic book series adaption done by IDW or similar. That would ultimately fit the only market that really wants to see them again to an absolute tee.
Makes sense for Kid Chameleon to return with the current rogue-lite craze. Took them long enough though.
MonkeyBall was a cheap remix and in the end wasn't as good as the GameCube classics . It was such a missed opportunity for me . . I'm sure SEGA Japan is actually working on a VF6 but it would have been better if SEGA did a classic collection of the VF games for the consoles and PC to build up interest . Sakura Wars was a fab reboot sadly overlooked by many . To me when the teams were giving their presentation for games to get approved it would be Nagoshi and his team showing the game off... meeting closed. I know it's a gross generalisation but it's how I feel and I still think Yakuza should be given a break . I think will will see far more creatively from SEGA Japan now he's gone but till will tell. I really impressed with how SEGA Japan been run these few years under Haruki mind.
Sega posted a video about a new video and JSR and someone did a translation in text form and some details were given away here too: https://www.siliconera.com/sega-now-hiring-for-jet-set-radio/ Basically they seem really passionate, going overseas for graffiti lessons in LA and San Diego. It's cool stuff.
