Sega Nerds

21 opinions for Sega’s future is license games

• Angelo
  Aug 15, 2007 at 2:42 am

  The games industry is as much of a business as it is about making games. From the mid-to-late-90s and into the first few years of this decade Sega released many excellent games, many of which are favorites among this blog’s audience–but on the business side of things there were tons of blunders and despite these excellent games, they still hemmoraged money.

  I’m glad to see they’re getting back on their feet, but, I can’t help but fear that Sega’s profit is at the cost of its “soul.” (A sentiment that was common among longtime Disney fans during the later years of Michael Eisner at the helm.) Some argue that that’s already happened, even. It’s a tricky balancing act.

• V1L3
  Aug 15, 2007 at 3:42 am

  Sonic hasn’t lost his appeal because of our age. He’s lost his appeal because Sega insist on putting him in crappy half-assed games.

  If that were true, why are so many older gamers looking forward to Mario Galaxy? If Sonic loses his appeal after 12, surely Mario should lose his appeal after, what, 6? But the game actually looks GOOD. That’s the difference.

  Instead of bringing out 5 crap Sonic games a year, try making ONE decent one, Sega. You might find it’d attract more sales than those 5 games put together, if you’re not insulting the gamers with bad level design and horrific physics.

  Or just sell the license to someone who might have a clue what they’re doing. As in, anyone.

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 4:06 am

  New Super Mario Bros had horrible level design, Sonic Rush had awesome and NSMB outsold it like 10 to 1. Anything with Mario on it sells. Multiple paths is something Sonic really needs and more plateformers imo.

  Mario has alot of crappy games. Mario Party still sold more then a million in less then a month. Mario just sells cause it has a loyal fanbase, even if its shit.

• Aki-at
  Aug 15, 2007 at 4:13 am

  Cool =/= Liking

  I like Mario, heck when I was a wee whimper snapper, I thought he was cool, but then I grew out of that, I stopped think Mario was cool and just thought he was good. Yeah Mario isn’t popular because his cool, his popular because his games are good. And seriously, if we got together about 100 pre-12 year old Sonic fans and waited for them to grow up, chances are 60 of them will drop out and stop being Sonic fans.

  “Or just sell the license to someone who might have a clue what they’re doing. As in, anyone”

  Like who? Nintendo likes to make a game innovative to the point its a different game, Capcom are only good at 2D Megaman games so rules them out, Insomniac Games is basically the same level over and over again (Yes I’m talking about Ratchet & Clank) and well I can go on.

  Anyway, the most interesting part of the article I came across was the wiping out of the Japanese Old Guard, come on, another console might have worked! = [

  Or maybe not…

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 5:29 am

  Call me a idiot, but I hate Mario games.

  Mario 64 was nothing like Super Mario World, Sunshine was more awful (yes i said it) then Sonic Heroes. New Super Mario Bros had uninspiring levels and bosses. Mario Party is cancer. Mario Kart Double Dash was awful, had a dumb gimmick, and retarded courses. Super Paper Mario sucked compared to the Thousand Year Door (title right?). Mario DDR was a complete Joke. Mario 3 on 3 was a disaster. *prob missed like 30 other mediocre mario games*

  I don’t see whats so great about Mario Kart Wii or Mario Galaxy. They look like the same old crap. I don’t know how mario has creditability.

  Metroid Prime 3 looks cool though, Smash Bros Brawl not so much.

  If Sega can’t loose 20 million on a game, i doubt they can make it through a hardware generation lol.

  I disagree that SEGA is selling there soul. If they did they wouldn’t have released Gunstar Super Heroes, Yakuza, or Astro Boy on GBA… all great sega games.

• Aki-at
  Aug 15, 2007 at 5:46 am

  Heh, I agree with you George with some of your comments about Mario, most his spin-offs, and I’ve yet to play Super Paper Mario and New Mario Brothers to pass judgement on it. I’d have to disagree on Super Mario 64, I found it excellent, though I wouldn’t be able to play it constantly like I could with earlier Mario games, playing more then 40 minutes it starts to get boring (though taking a few breaks kinda sorts this out for me, odd huh?)

  As for SEGA’s “soul” well the good out way the bad, the only bad thing is SEGA might go so over board on focusing towards us Westerns we might not see many of their Japanese games! that’s not what long time SEGA fans want.

  But even then, Virtua Fighter 5, Sonic Rush Adventure, NiGHTS, SEGA Rally Revo, The Club and Golden Axe (even with the little we know about it) are teeming with personality, lets just hope those big PS3 games get sold in America too, Mr. Jeffrey or whoever is in charge of bringing games over should realize that games don’t sell without good marketing, something SEGA of America have become awful at, and I’m sure is the reason Yakuza and Outrun 2 failed.

  I mean how the hell could they not market a guy beating the stuffing out of people in the streets or driving a Ferrari with your girlfriend through America? (Heck I’m sure its loads of American boys dreams) they should really shape up their marketing team.

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 7:15 am

  Super Mario 64 wasn’t a bad game, just wasn’t a Mario game. I didn’t have that Mario feel. See one of the common complaints about Sonic games (about all of them after Sonic and Knuckles) is that they don’t feel like the orginals. Mario 64 felt nothing like the originals, but people still consider it a great game. With all its fetch quests and punching (and what not)

  SEGA of Japan does a bunch of license games that we never see (I wrote two articles about a couple of hit games that are getting sequels, JP only prob) Even Bleach is a licensed game (yay we are getting it) I can name too many licensed games by SEGA that were great (some not so great). They have always been there. Its about time SEGA gets some license games from the west. I got to say, this is better then Micheal Jackson license (though that game did bring in great lulz)

  As for Sega of America’s Marketing. Yes, its generic and awful. Some games have been getting some alright advertising time (not great advertisements imo) Sonic and the Secret of the Rings, Sonic 06, and Virtua Fighter 5 all got tv spots. Armored Core 4 had a community site with prizes. So on. Sega needs to reduce the amount of games it makes. Delay games that aren’t read y to be shipped. Fixed load times/glitches. Spent the save money from the games not being worked on (SEGA works on like 14 games a year and like 5 of those are good) into advertising.

  Look at Copcom, they spent like 20 million (more then it cost to make) on advertising Lost Planet and it paid off big time for them. Okami got crappy advertising and so did God hand (failures… sadly amazing games)

  Sega should have spent more money advertising Gunstar Super Heroes, that game was seriously the best game (along with Astroboy) on the GBA. Sega spent little to no money on the game. The game got great scores and won some awards. Nintendo Power even urged readers to pick it up after it didn’t show up in the sales charts.

• ROJM
  Aug 15, 2007 at 8:21 am

  God what are these people on? “cost their soul” What nonesense,Sega has always made license games they pratically wrote the book on how to do license games for arcade and console so I dunno why people are over reacting to this PR stunt for or in general. Hopefully the big blue can force ther competition to create better licensed games when their titles come out and be the best dang movie tie in/license games on the market at the moment.
  If anything you should be worried about the over exploitation of Sonic with the lapse attitude of creating games that are cheap develop ed for under a year and manages to make insane ammounts of money despite the final product being crass. That is costing Sega its soul not this which is essentially a PR for potential stockholders and estabilshed stockholders to feel safe and invest more into the company.

• Jon
  Aug 15, 2007 at 9:26 am

  I would like to point out that they have quite a few expensive, several years in the making games, coming out. Not everything they make is a cheap one year fling, it seems that thats exclusive to Sonic Teams franchises. And while that may be the flagship studio, I’d rather think that Am-2 can make a good game. OutRun 2, Afterburn Climax, Virtua Fighter 5, Ghost Squad, Virtua Tennis 3 and the like have all been good games.

  Also, Nagoshi’s conference a few weeks back really brought a smile to my face. A game by the Sakura Taisen team with gorgeous (and completely unique) graphics, a game by the Yakuza team (Nagoshi + Most of Smilebit) that is to be able to move more than any other project in his history, a history that includes the highly successful Monkey Ball series (which has two platinums under its belt and is hard at work on its third) and Yakuza series (which has one platinum), which I believe he said would be announced Sept 15 or somewhere around there. Not to mention 2 mystery games.

  Golden Axe has been getting quite a bit of good press, has undoubtably been given a hefty budget and it seems to have been in development since 2005.

  Sega Rally is being crafted by a studio dedicated entirely to racing games, with members of Rockstar North and Rare, two of Europes most prestegious studios.

  Sega is handing out the liscence to Sonic, Dimps has made 4 good Sonic games in a row, and from what I’ve read of Rush 2 is set to be good Sonic game no 5. Thats something even Sonic Team never did (S2 was by STI). Not to mention the very competent Bioware has been assigned to make them an RPG. While I make not like the idea, its certainly going to sell, and whats more, will certainly be good. Bioware rarely screws up.

  Sell their soul my ass. It seems as though SEGA’s at their best this side of Dreamcast.

• yusaku
  Aug 15, 2007 at 9:27 am

  Again, people make the mistake of taking PR and Marketing people seriously, little do they know they are left in the dark for the most part as as Sega’s plans are concerned, yet people throw a tauntrum as if Simon’s Jeffry’s words are somehow paramount.

  But this is an odd article to say the least, 80% of it is merely a rundown of Sega’s recent history(with a negative spin) and their basis for their entire article are two very small quotes from the PR guy himself.

  Also it appears, Business Week seems to have been living under a rock for these past years, because Sega’s selection of games have always appealed to the majority of gamers from kids to adults, it’s always been like that, for years.

  Take this with a grain of salt, people.

• Kogen
  Aug 15, 2007 at 10:12 am

  You have to remember where most of these games are coming from. Golden Axe is the only game SEGA of America are doing that could be great, NiGHTS has potential but we know who we’re dealing with here. The rest are Japanese or European(counting non-Europe European country games also). It’s also good to remember that this is only the president of SEGA of America making these comments, SEGA of Japan are the head of the company and SEGA of Europe are quickly growing to equal SEGA of America. It’s not the universal opinion of all of SEGA.

  Jon, the Dimps handheld Soinc games may have been good(they did 6 actually; Sonic Pocket Adventure and Sonic Battle too, but not doing Sonic Rush Adventure) but they certainly weren’t great. All their sales combined don’t even equal the Sonic 1 cart on Genesis; this doesn’t even include all the re-releases and collections with Sonic 1 being focus or part of it or the difference in size of the gaming industry now. You shouldn’t compare them to the old Sonic Team like that. SEGA just got lucky with Dimps, all their attempts with others have failed so far. Bioware being potential though, like you said.

  I’d agree that Simon Jeffery is trying to change the company into something that isn’t SEGA, just SEGA in name alone. But I don’t think he’ll succeed. He failed with Lucas Arts and he’ll fail here. The man will be gone in probably 3 years once the Japanese and European studios start pumping out quality SEGA franchises. These stupid comments and ignorance about his own company show that he isn’t going to go far if things start to get great for SEGA again. The other divisions of the company wouldn’t let that happen, they’ve dealt with this in the past when SEGA of America tried to go ‘extreme’ with sports/American-styled games. Basically they fired the stupid bastard and replaced him with someone great.

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 10:35 am

  No one got fired for going ‘Extreme’ visual concepts was probably the best thing to happened to Sega of America, during the dreamcast. NFL2K games sold alot of Dreamcast’s and was the best selling game on Dreamcast, regardless if you liked it.

  When did Simon Jeffery try to change Sega? He isn’t telling them not to make a Japanese title. SEGA of Japan runs things, they give Europe/America branch money to do what they will with. SOA bought Secret Level and Sega of Europe got Creative Assembly and SEGA racing Studio.

  Simon Jeffery did get some license games to make. But is this really new with SEGA? SEGA of Japan makes like a shit load license games a year. Why not the American branch make 2 or so a year? SEGA of Japan’s more popular arcade games are license based games.

  I think pointing the finger at the American branch for doing the same thing the main branch (SOJ) is doing, but with ‘American’ companies is idiotic. You are also acting like Simon Jeffery has total control over SOJ and is trying to change them.

  Simply put, if Simon Jeffery’s plan doesn’t work out, Sega looses money, he will be out. Simple as that. I don’t see his plan failing. Iron Man movie was the biggest thing this year at Comic Con (2 years ago it was 300, look how that turned out ;) )

• Kogen
  Aug 15, 2007 at 11:01 am

  I’m referring to whom I think is Michael Katz. Around the years of 1988 - 1991. You know, the start greatest years in gaming directly due to SEGA and him not being there any more. Unless you liked those old football and golf games on the Genesis and Master System… or the stuff like MJ(like others said, was very funny at least). He wasn’t advancing SEGA anywhere and was leading them to their doom, the new President of SEGA turned everything around in North America then quit after SEGA of Japan ruined everything in 1995.

  He’s trying to make SEGA like the other American publishers, which isn’t what SEGA has ever been like. These stupid comments he made prove he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, as does SoA’s and his personal recent chain of failures. He also stated before that he wants 50% of SEGA games to be licensed games. Some are certainly okay, but this goal isn’t. He has a legacy to stand by and he isn’t doing that, he’s in it solely for the personal gain. Being a greedy bastard helps no one but himself.

  And now after reading more of what you said, I don’t even know if you’re talking to me as it doesn’t relate to what I wrote earlier. If you are, you’ve misread it.

  Iron Man may be a big game, but it’ll certainly not be ‘great’ one. Being on like 8 consoles on release always ensures this. The other real games like SEGA Rally Revo are what really matter. Making money off the work of film makers isn’t something good, it’s lazy and isn’t to be respected.

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 11:53 am

  I thought you were talking about the Dreamcast era Sega for some reason.

  Anyway, Iron Man isn’t a great game? I didn’t know you played it? Talk about not giving a game a chance.

  So games like Bleach or Initial D is lazy and making money off the Manga/anime?

  Bleach DS is prob the best fighter on the DS, but obviously its SEGA being lazy…?

• Kogen
  Aug 15, 2007 at 12:19 pm

  I said films, not anime. And there are of course exceptions, Treasure even managed to make a game about Ronald McDonald fun. But you know movie-games almost always suck and that games on ‘everything’ usually suck too(they’re almost always the movies games). The entire idea behind it is to get sales off people who saw a good movie and don’t know much about video games to conclude that it’ll be a shitty game. The chance is there that’ll it’ll be good/great, but it’s very low.

• Aki-at
  Aug 15, 2007 at 1:11 pm

  “He also stated before that he wants 50% of SEGA games to be licensed games”

  Can you provide a link to this article Kogen? I’d really like to read about it, it would change my opinion of this man.

• George
  Aug 15, 2007 at 1:21 pm

  I thought Iron Man was only confirmed for 360/PS3.

• Kogen
  Aug 15, 2007 at 1:52 pm

  I can’t remember where it was but I’m thinking 1up. I’ll post it later if I can find it. He was talking about how Sega needs to be like Activision and EA, I think. It was around when they first got Iron Man and he assured everyone that SEGA would continue making their own products(if any of this makes someone else remember where it is.)

  Iron Man is being worked on by another developer to do PSP, PS2, and Wii. Can’t remember if they’re doing DS, PC, or anything else.

• Aki-at
  Aug 15, 2007 at 2:58 pm

  Okay thanks for that Kogen, I’ll be checking on that on 1up right now.

• Ryan
  Aug 15, 2007 at 5:26 pm

  I think SOA are doing very good things and very bad things at the mo so Its very hard to say weather where they are going is good or bad.

  I dont have much faith in movie based games with deadlines such as the Marvel ones.. REALLY bad move. But on the other hand the Aliens games which are based on classic movies with massive cult fanbase that SEGA can put as much money and time into as they like and really make a great game is a very good movie I wish thats what SEGA would focus on more.

  I also think SOA have made some really good moves working with some really awesome American developers like Monolith for just 1 example of many.

  I’d like to see alot more awesome big budget titles from SOJ and I’d like the Movie based games kept to a minimum but all in all I think SEGA are starting to get it right again!

• udx
  Aug 15, 2007 at 11:58 pm

  Well apparently, Newsweek somehow messed up and Simon Jeffery has made an apology, and what he really meant to say. Here it is, couresty of Sonic Stadium.

  In no way did I mean that Sonic isn’t cool for the over 12s. I am an over 40 – and I still love Sonic. Press interviews often result in misleading quotes – as is the case here. What I was trying to convey was that SEGA needs to build better quality Sonic games, that appeal to everyone – not just the under 12s. It is a fault of some of the recent games, not of Sonic, that the current situation exists – and that is something that we are working hard to change.

  We believe Sonic is one of the coolest characters in videogame history – and we are striving to make the games themselves better.

  Sorry my meaning was taken out of context – fans like yourself are important to us

  Simon

  And here’s another one, based on the article itself

  The trouble with a one hour press interview, is that only bits and pieces actually get written into the article. My actual sentiment is that SEGA needs to work hard to make Sonic cool for everybody by building better games that appeal to fans of all ages. I’m in my 40s, and am a big Sonic fan myself.

  I’m glad that we have fans like you who care enough to write to me – because believe me, I care about Sonic too, and want to make better games that please everybody.

  Simon

  So…blame the liberal media this time?

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