Sega's Grand Plans, Development Changes

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their report detailing Sega's first press conference under their new boss, Hisao Oguchi. As well as announcing "a target of doubling the company's global market share in the next five years", Sega announced better-than-expected Japanese software sales, including a good performance for racing title Initial D, and also detailed major changes in the company's development structure, as explained via a GamePro article - highlights include: "Sonic Team and United Game Artists (makers of Space Channel 5 and Rez) will merge and form a company whose aim is games for casual users. Sega-AM2 will stay as is... [and] Virtua Fighter designer Yu Suzuki will form a new development team."

Comments

And yet no good...

[Creepy Crawler]

Games for the USA.

I really miss the years of Nintendo (85-93) where innovation hit games. People wernt afraid of developing a few "different" games. Yeah, many stunk, but those few were wonderful.

Now, it's "Lets Publish" v.X+1 of anything that sold in last quarter.

Kinda sad, but many linux games are more fun than Dancing Game 3000SuperX or DrivingGamePowerGo or 3DFPSShootSpree. Most of linux games are mindless (chess, go, shogi exempt) but at least keeps me interested more than 20 minutes.

Re:And yet no good...

[cgenman]

Companies in the gaming industry are starting to catch on to the law of diminishing sequals. The law states that the first game will blow all sales records and the second game will also have strong sales. The third game will show good sales, the fourth: a generous OK. The fifth game will be lucky to break even. The longer between sequals, the better the sales. The better the quality, the better the sales.

Mathematically speaking, this law can be paraphrased as

This sequal sales = last sequal sales * ( current quality / previous quality ) * Years between release / 2

The problem is that when figuring out if another sequel is warranted, developers usually take the 1st release sales figures into account, not the last, and try to minimize the time between releases to get the gaming goodies as quickly as possible. Bad news: Mega Man X8 sold poorly. Do the math.

What the industry needs is more seeds. More Ape Escape 1's and more Deceptions. More titles that sell millions because they are new, not because they are sequels. Sadly, though, this is difficult when all magazines cover is buzz, and buzz is hard to generate for a game that nobody has ever heard of let alone played.

Now I'm off to chat on the Worms 3D forums.

Re:And yet no good...

[grahamwest]

There are lots of interesting, different games published. People don't buy them. On my shelf I have about 60 PS2 games and I'd say over half of them are more than just "v.X+1". According to the last USA sales figures I saw, 11 of them had sold less than 50,000 copies at retail and another 9 had sold less than 100,000 copies. While some of them are flawed I'd say any of them is at least decent and 3 of them - Rez, Ico and Fatal Frame - are truly excellent.

It costs around $4 million to make a modern videogame and therefore the game needs to sell well to recoup that cost. It's hard to convince upper management to bet that much money when the odds look to be very much against financial success.

Re:And yet no good...

[Hadlock]

Then again GTA3 really broke new ground in the series. GTA 1 & 2 were essentially top-down, essentially 2-D shooters that you could drive around in cars. I played GTA2, and it was great, tons of fun. My friend showed me GTA3, and my jaw litterally dropped when I watched him picking off grannies from two blocks away with a sniper rifle, and taking on the SWAT team from a 3D over the shoulder view.

As to Vice City, You might have a point there, since all it is is GTA3 with a little bit of spit 'n polish & a Miami 80's story line, a page taken straight out of the Tomb Raider series.

Re:And yet no good...

[cgenman]

On the one hand, GTA 3 was a reinvisioning of the series, not a sequal so much as a remake. On the other hand, if you had actually read all of my post you would note that GTA3 was both released a full 3 years after GTA2 and had a much higher relative quality level, both of which would account for higher sales under the given equation. The "law" as stated in text was merely a statement of the recognition that one cannot milk a series forever.

Vice City is just an expansion pack. It was released 5 months after the original, and contains almost zero original code. Rockstar doesn't count it as a true sequal, and neither do I.

"Casual Gamers"?

[neostorm]

I'm really concerned about the combination of Sonic Team and UGA making games for "Casual Gamers". Generally the titles produced by these teams is anything but. That's depressing to think of considering only a year or so ago UGA was being hailed as one of the most innovative development teams for creating Rez. When I think "Casual Gamers" innovation and creativity usually does not come to mind.

Re:"Casual Gamers"?

[chill182]

I'm really concerned about the combination of Sonic Team and UGA making games for "Casual Gamers". Generally the titles produced by these teams is anything but.

Rez and Space Channel 5 are ideal for casual gamers. Both only use the control pad and 2 buttons. They have the simplicity of an NES game.

When I think "Casual Gamers" innovation and creativity usually does not come to mind.

If I look at the most popular games played by my non-gamer friends there is Tony Hawk, GTA3, Super Smash Bros Melee and The Sims. I think these are all innovative and creative games. I hope more games are marketed towards casual gamers so that video gaming can become more mainstream and shake its stigma of being "adolescent boys who don't go outside."

Sonic Space Channel Fighter

[rf0]

If they are doing this why don't they merge all of the teams and give us Sonic Space Channel Fighter. Now thats a game I would like to see

Rus