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Sega To Close Arcades, Cancel Games, Lay Off Employees
slugo writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"The house that Sonic built is getting significantly smaller. Sega's Japanese main branch said Tuesday that it will close 110 arcades, cancel some games in development and seek to lay off 18 percent of its staff. ... Sega says it will chop 20 percent off its research-and-development budget for arcade and consumer games. The company plans to do this by 'consolidating titles to be developed' and 'enhancing the self-manufacture ratio.'"
Arcades are still alive and well in Japan, as I can attest from my recent trip there. I spent some time in a 7 floor arcade...one floor all UFO catchers, one floor all sticker booths (and mostly girls-only) with 5 for games. Expensive, though; the games used ¥100 coins; ~$1 at the exchange rate at the time.
'enhancing the self-manufacture ratio.'?
What does this mean? Outsource development to offshore companies?
Maybe you should care about this, because they're also firing 20% of the R&D stuff "for arcade and consumer titles". But even that's a bit redundant, because most of their titles were developed for both. Most of Sega's own games were really arcade games.
So, sure, in the very short term they can probably live a year or two off just porting their existing arcade games to every platform out there. But in the long run I can't help feeling that Sega is making itself less and less relevant. They're hardly making games any more. They're making more and more ports and emulations of games they made 10 years ago, with the occasional rehash, remake or sequel thrown in.
How long _can_ they live off innovation and good ideas they had in the 90's?
At any rate, even without caring about Sega or its arcades per se, it's yet another step towards less original stuff in the games market. Yet another company is getting firmer and firmer set into making just ports and sequels. (Mind you, in Sega's case it had started going that way already, but this is another step down that road.) Now I'm not going to go in panic over it or anything, but it's hardly reason to be flippant about it either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, they were already a publisher too, which pretty much _is_ outsourcing. I guess they'll just stick to more of that from now on.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned they killed Sonic when they turned him into a monstrous, slow werewolf and killed everything that made Sonic good. Why should I have to play a slow, sub-par action game to get to the good, fast Sonic levels?
What else do these guys even make? It's kind of a shame to see them in such shape since they were a pioneer, but they need to make better decisions.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
They actually have a pretty neat CCG RTS arcade game based on the Three Kingdoms era. It's also on the Nintendo DS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLtTPvzTls
After each game you get a random card which you can use for future battles. I believe they are networked too so you can play with people around the country.
Maybe so, but we have heard of Google...
No sig today...
"So, sure, in the very short term they can probably live a year or two off just porting their existing arcade games to every platform out there. But in the long run I can't help feeling that Sega is making itself less and less relevant. They're hardly making games any more. They're making more and more ports and emulations of games they made 10 years ago, with the occasional rehash, remake or sequel thrown in. How long _can_ they live off innovation and good ideas they had in the 90's?"
Lets see:
[X] Hollywood does it ... uh, they didn't do it (copy the asians)
[X] The TV Networks do it
[X] The RIAA is still milking 30-year-old tunes
[X] Book publishers do it
[X] Everyone trying to become the next facebook is doing it
[_] GM
MBMBA - "Management By MBA"
Sticker booths, aka photo booths like the ones you'll see at the beach, but they seem to be bigger. UFO catcher aka claw vending machines like the ones you'll see at walmart.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
That's a bit of a black and white view. "X does it too" doesn't automatically make X equivalent, if the extent differs considerably. E.g., "Alice took a sick day too" doesn't make her equivalent to Wally who was sick half the year.
To go through your list:
Hollywood makes plenty of new movies too, not just remakes and ports of the old ones. In fact, I don't think that remakes are that big a part of their income.
In fact, other than Lucas, I can't think of anyone whose main business for years was re-releasing the same 10 year old movies, to the extent that Sega did lately.
1. TV networks do show new stuff all the time. E.g., all the news and the sports, for some easy examples.
2. TV networks are hardly equivelent to a game development studio. They're far more akin to the retailer you buy Sega's games from, than to Sega itself.
3. TV networks have the saving grace that their stuff is perceived as being for free. So even old crap still feels like it costs nothing to watch. If anyone's business model was that you have to pay $60 per movie (which is what games are really like), or let's say per season of a series, you'd find that they depend a lot more on releasing new stuff.
So all things considered at best you make the point there that a whole different industry works differently.
The RIAA, or more correctly the individual labels, get most of their income from new over-hyped albums, not from those 30 year old tunes. The fact that those are still available at discounted prices, doesn't mean that's all that any label does.
Book publishers release new books every day. Re-releasing old paperbacks at barely more than the cost of printing and distribution is hardly their main business model.
1. I'm not sure how Facebook is even remotely comparable to a game development business.
2. Just like in the dot-com days, most startups in that line of business fail. They just burn through more and more venture capital, and never figure out how to make anyone pay for that mindless clone of another site... which also doesn't turn a profit. If any of them even tried to sell their service for the same price a game sells, they'd find their maket share drop to zero overnight.
So how's that a good idea for Sega? Should they too copy a failed business model and, umm, fail?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But you probably have them anyway even if you call them different names (UFO catcher = that game where you try to grab an object from the pile using a finicky grabbing crane, sticker booths = photo booths with the option to add stupid overlays over the photo before printing it).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Only if we're lucky.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If every time they beat a dead horse, a few more dollars come out, why would they ever stop?
There are too many people still buying their shitty games to make them stop, or actually produce something decent. There's a reason Sega crashed out of the console market and don't have any decent game franchises anymore: they're fucking shit at everything.
There is also a very awesome arcade game based off of the Gundam anime, which I played frequently when I lived in Japan. It was the same type of thing, a CCG RTS game, although this one was kind of more similar to something like a real time Shining Force. They were also networked, although only some arcades had them hooked up to the network, other arcades only had local available.
I really hope they are not closing their arcade in Akihabara. All my friends are amazed when I describe how thriving the arcades are in Japan. The bigger ones are usually comprised of about three or four stories, each with a different genre or games (fighting, shooters, etc). They are always busy, and it is an amazing feeling I haven't seen since the old days of Aladin's Castle. This news really saddens me.
-Phil
UrbanLegions.net - Online Super Hero Text-based RPG
We can only hope they fired the morons that took over Team Sonic and are forced to look for some less completely retarded people to take over for them.
I read the internet for the articles.
I haven't seen any R&D, that's why arcades are not as new and exciting as they could be. There will be a second coming and there will be profit for the right company. Segas shooting games just aren't cool anymore! New title same old game! Why can't your drive and shoot at the same time? arcades need some good R&D. Me and my friend John have been designing _many_ arcade games, were just to stoned to do anything about it.
I see your point, and I'll even agree with you there, but DVDs are simply one of the many distribution channels of that product. It's planned from the start that the movie will be released in cinemas, on DVDs, on Blue Ray, etc. It's still the same product.
In a sense, it's the same as releasing WoW in a version on 4 CDs and a version on 1 DVD. It's still the same game, only on a different physical medium.
IMHO the equivalent to how Sega does its ports would be maybe if there's at least a re-mastering involved for the new medium, possibly even re-filming a couple of scenes. Or turning a movie into a TV series, for example.
As I was saying, Lucas did it with some of his releases (see the "Han shot first" issue), but not many others. Well, I suppose you could count the "extended, director's cut" version some movies get as a re-release, but that's really borderline IMHO.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So this means I can expect Super Sonic Ball!?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Shenmue III.
Suzuki, you bastard. At least write the book.
Why are claw vending machines (UFO catchers) legal? Most of them have potentiometers in them controlling the claw strength and payout percentage, so the operator controls how often the game can be won. It is not a game of skill, and it hardly even has anything to do with luck.
No existe.
I haven't seen an arcade in at least 6 or 8 years. I live in California.
I have to disagree.
:(
When Sega crashed out of the console market, they were releasing some of the best games of the generation. The Dreamcast, for all its faults, was home to some incredible games. I don't think anyone can deny it that.
If a console's success was measured purely on the strength of its games, then the Dreamcast would surely be one of the most successful consoles ever -- which is remarkable, considering its criminally short life-span.
So I'm afraid you're wrong. Sega may be making "shitty games" right now (I certainly wouldn't argue with that), but they were doing the exact opposite at the time they abandoned the console market. The truth is that Sega left the hardware business due to financial problems. What a pity.
You are a loon. I'd kill for a new version of my beloved Sega Dreamcast.
If you think our UFO catchers are bad, you should see the ones in Japan. Instead of 3 pronged claws, most of theirs have 2 prongs...and some have only one. Still possible to win, though, and I'm guessing they're popular because they're like legal gambelling. There's a strong seconed-hand market in Japan for the collectable toys you get from UFO catchers and gatchapon (capsule toy) machines. You could spend $100 and if you get a rare enough toy, make all your money back with some to spare.
Here's a two-pronged Japanese UFO catcher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UFOCatcher1.jpg