Basically, SEGA of America. SEGA Europe maybe a little, but it's mostly SEGA America and arcade stuff.
The scary part is that according to the report, Sega has only 100 million yen in capital. That's roughly US$850,000. That sounds like a dangerously low amount for what I perceive as still a large corporation.
They should sell Sonic to Capcom, Phantasy Star and Shining to Square Enix, and Yakuza and Puyo Puyo to Ubisoft. :specialed: It sure is a good thing that the far richer SEGA Sammy is the part that does the buying and selling.
Same here. I don't know why anyone would still have faith in this company (let alone have them still exist) if they're still putting out rushed piles of shitfests like Boom: Rise of Lyric and Aliens: Colonial Marines despite being lambasted for releasing Sonic 06 in the state it was in a mere 6/8 years ago.
Sonic may be the frontrunner (ha), but Sega as a whole hasn't been doing swell in other areas. It's turning more profit on its niche and mobile games than its bigger gambles, plus they refuse to localize things that actually would sell over here. Sonic can at least break even most of the time no matter how garbage his games get but Sega's other properties aren't so fortunate. They might get little victories like VC on PC, Aliens Isolation, and Transformed but they need a hell of a lot of them to pile up in order to stay where they are. That or they shrink themselves so the niche can sustain them.
Recently the bad stuff SEGA has put out has mainly come from SEGA America though. SEGA Europe has been pretty good with the exception of the mobile games that have far too many microtransactions Hardlight puts out, and recently put out Alien Isolation. SEGA Japan has also been putting out good stuff like Phantasy Star Online 2, the Yakuza games and Puyo Puyo Tetris, though the Shining series has become something completely different from what it used to be. The main problem with them is that not enough of their games are localized.
I sure wish the community had a few rich people in it. I wouldn't mind if Retro bought the rights to Sonic.
I'd buy the rights to Blinx the Time Sweeper. But basically this is mostly non-news, changes will be pretty much completely unnoticeable from the consumer's point of view. People affected will either get jobs elsewhere, form their own studio, or take the redundancy money and retire.
My worry is physical games will dry up entirely. This coming generation onwards is going to be a FUCKER to archive for the long term thanks to insistence on using DRM. More need to learn from GoG's example.
So going by tweets, basically all of SEGA America's community team has been let go. Kellie Parker, Clumseh and Sam Mullen have all tweeted about it, and Stephen Frost has hinted that he's no longer there as well. EDIT: Actually, sounds like they aren't fired (yet) after all: https://twitter.com/sam_mullen/status/561240268637106176?s=07
Found this on a website. Local organizations managing packaged game software in Western markets will be streamlined. In the U.S., Sega of America, Inc. based in San Francisco will be relocated to Southern California by this summer and its existing office in San Francisco will be closed thereafter, which results in reducing fixed expenses, mainly in corporate functions. In addition, the Sonic and merchandising businesses will be reinforced to establish a structure which can generate stable profits. Come on man, I wanted to believe you :,(
Maybe you want to look up what reinforced means. So okay, Sonic will be affected, but in a way that we'll probably see even more of him.
The way reinforced is used here it can be interpreted a number of ways. I take it as them making less Sonic games to save money, it cost money to make games. Why make games if they don't make money.
Tragic news. Lifelong Sega fan here from childhood. It feels like every couple of years or so we're hearing that's Sega's dying just a little more. Makes me wonder whether they'll even be around in a few years. All I want to know for definite is what is happening to Sonic. "Reinforced" is the vaguest possible term. NeoGAF are speculating that Sonic Runners is the big Sonic game for this year hence why Sonic Team is behind it. What is the fate of the rumoured Xbox One and PS4 title, presuming of course it's even in development? Just trying to discern hard confirmation on whether Sonic will still be getting console games or is going mobile only in this refocus. Sonic Runners kind of indicates he's going mobile only for now. At least for this year. It would explain why Sonic Team's behind the game instead of Hardlight.
Sounds like Aaron got out of there at the right time if the community reps are all getting the boot. Hopefully they won't get nixed.
I'm in agreement here and sadly it's an issue that takes a lot effort to resolve. The fact that we're (Finally) getting Yakuza 5 and (surprisingly) Dengeki Bunko is great & welcomed news, since the general consensus was that their localization chances were dubious at best given the circumstances and lack of a response from SEGA (both sides having their understandable reasons). I strongly feel like their low risk/digital initiative could handle most of these titles well with the right marketing and social media awareness push, it just needs to happen from both sides of SEGA...it also still baffles me that PSO2 fills all three of SEGA's direction quite well (PC, Digital, Mobile/F2P) and yet we've to see it release here despite the localization announcement years ago. SEGA still has a great catalogue and continues to put out some great games, that point needs to get across to people, not just the crappy stuff.
