Sega needs to build new franchises or republish old ones, but is so busy with itself that it may not be able to keep up in the transition years to the new console generation.
They will not vanish, but maybe they will be bought by a large publisher like EA or EIDOS and I don’t want to see this happen.
Naka-san is not the only problem, it seems like nobody in the team can program!
I wonder what games slip through QA these days.
That’s also a problem, the last crisis of the industry was triggered by a load of terrible buggy cheap games. That’s why there is supposed to be Quality Assurance now. Wich is a joke, when marketing decides it’s time to launch a title, than it’s pushed, look at stuff like “Enter the Matrix”…
[quote=“lordcraymen”]Naka-san is not the only problem, it seems like nobody in the team can program!
I wonder what games slip through QA these days.
That’s also a problem, the last crisis of the industry was triggered by a load of terrible buggy cheap games. That’s why there is supposed to be Quality Assurance now. Wich is a joke, when marketing decides it’s time to launch a title, than it’s pushed, look at stuff like “Enter the Matrix”…[/quote]
Sonic Team didn’t do Enter The Matrix…
Actually though, you do have a point. One of my greatest niggles is what sort of crap passes through “Quality Control”. While they’re looking for bugs, you’d think they’d be able to say “hang on, Boss, this is a piece of shit. I wouldn’t pay ?5 for this let alone ?40”. But no…
I think it’s an attempt to emulate the GC Mario games, with lots of “cool” poses (considering people still do the “peace” sign in Japanese cartoons though, I think it might be a Japanese thing).
Sega made the right decision by making the game a multi-plaftorm title, though I hear the Playstation 2 version struggles to emulate the graphics of its GamCube and Xbox counterparts. No surprises there.
[quote=“lordcraymen”]i second that. most of the great “developer legends” (and sadly enough, they think of themselvs as such) had their titles in the age of arcade gaming.
hardly any of them has a vision that goes beyond 10 hours worth of gameplay. if sega, especially the management, doesn’t do something really quick, SEGA will be one of the first companies to collaps in the comming fall of the gaming industry.[/quote]
I think that Sega needs to develop some more epic, lengthy titles such as Skies of Arcadia and Shining Force. Mind you, there are a good deal of quality titles that are short such as the old Panzer and Sonic games… if only the development teams could expand these ideas, make the games longer but still keep them as interesting, then we’d see some really awesome games from Sega. But they probably wouldn’t sell very well anyway…
Which isn’t an option for Sega. Guaranteed profits come before all other concerns, so we’re bound to see a sequel to Billy Hatcher and maybe a remake of Shining Force 2 for the Game Boy Advance. Remaking the Phantasy Star series was pointless in my opinion and Phantasy Star Online Episode 3 has sold terribly in Japan, on the relatively popular GameCube no less.
What will Sega think of next?
Does anyone have the current sales figures for Sonic Heroes? The Sonic games have always kept Sega afloat, so I can presume Sonic Team is hard at work on a sequel already.