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Post by nocturnal YL on Apr 29, 2018 6:17:37 GMT -5
I'm not much of a fan of SEGA, being really interested in only 2 of their game series. But I've been paying attention to their offerings lately, and I found some random, amusing trivia about them. - They really love PlayStation. A lot of their games are PlayStation-centric, if not exclusive. All main series Yakuza are on PlayStation, for example, except for a single remake compilation on Wii U.
- More generally, they seem to prefer PlayStation first, then Nintendo systems, and finally Xbox. The handling of Puyo Puyo Tetris is the perfect example of this. That's the opposite of what you'd expect for a console maker that essentially got kicked out by the PS2 and tried to get close to the Xbox at first.
- This is more of an opinion: I'd say their weakest area is their modern handling of classic IPs. Or rather, Sonic. Other series don't really fluctuate between excellent and awful.
Nintendon'tOn Nintendo systems, they often out-Nintendo Nintendo and use the systems in ways Nintendo never did. Thus far, I've seen: - All but one of the GameCube games with Internet connectivity are from them. SEGA never made LAN games on GameCube, though.
- They published a 5-player split-screen racing game on Wii U when Nintendo only ever used the GamePad for asymmetric play, leaving traditional games with a weird "GamePad + 3 Wii Remotes" setup.
- Project mirai DX has gyro, AR, Play Coins, StreetPass, SpotPass, sleep mode audio out, speech recognition, touch, 3D and save file transfer in a single game. The last one is something Nintendo never did; the save data bonus in Kirby is done by reading StreetPass settings instead.
Some games also use GameCube-GBA connectivity, but that's not a Nintendon't. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on May 1, 2018 22:30:28 GMT -5
- More generally, they seem to prefer PlayStation first, then Nintendo systems, and finally Xbox. The handling of Puyo Puyo Tetris is the perfect example of this. That's the opposite of what you'd expect for a console maker that essentially got kicked out by the PS2 and tried to get close to the Xbox at first.
That is interesting, especially since early concepts for the original Xbox were supposed to include compatibility with Dreamcast games. Also, Peter Moore was the president of Sega of America during the Dreamcast era, but moved to Microsoft after that, thus the big push for Sega's games on the console. But the Dreamcast crowd just didn't seem to migrate to the Xbox considering that major releases like Jet Set Radio Future, Crazy Taxy 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta and Shenmue IIX were all massive flops. The Xbox audience ended up being too Western-centric for such Japanese games. For me, personally, coming off the Dreamcast and considering what my next console would be, the Xbox was the one I was least interested in partially because the idea of a Microsoft-made game console was off-putting, but also because I was salty over the whole Shenmue II fiasco and didn't like the feeling that I was being manipulated. Another interesting one is Nights: Journey of Dreams on the Wii, which used data from the Forecast Channel to mimic current real weather conditions in a certain mode of the game. |
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Post by nocturnal YL on Aug 22, 2018 10:24:07 GMT -5
Here's an article from Nintendo Life on an account of a major game company using underhanded methods to stop competition and to force employees to resign. LINK HEREThe article didn't name the company in question, but it's very obvious it's SEGA. Who else would go to extremes just to stop people from working with Nintendo, ran arcades, were well-versed in the underworld, operated near Haneda Airport, and had their isolation room issue exposed and had to apologise publicly afterwards? Someone took the term console wars a bit too literally. On that note: I'd say being forced out of the home console market was the best thing to happen to them. Not only are they far better at software, they're also forced to be more humble and not hell-bent on one-upping their competitors. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Aug 23, 2018 10:05:07 GMT -5
Yeah, I remember reading about that. That's pretty crazy. As far as I know, it never got that intense on the US side, but I do remember seeing some comments a while back from former Sega of America staff saying they were still bitter over the rivalry with Nintendo from the early '90s. They said it still doesn't feel right to them to see Sonic on a Nintendo console. It really got personal, especially during those US congressional hearings over video game violence. Nintendo and Sega took a lot of cheap shots at each other during that time, with Nintendo touting how family-friendly they were, and former Sega of America president Tom Kalinske responding by pulling out a Super Scope.
And former NoA vice president Howard Lincoln declared that Night Trap would never appear on a Nintendo platform. By the way, it comes out on Switch tomorrow.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Aug 23, 2018 11:16:29 GMT -5
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Post by Nester the Lark on Aug 23, 2018 11:33:50 GMT -5
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Post by nocturnal YL on Oct 17, 2018 15:08:09 GMT -5
Not really astonishing news, but their parent company have recently released a comprehensive list of their series' sales figures. gematsu.com/2018/10/sega-shares-updated-sales-numbers-for-persona-megami-tensei-yakuza-and-more-aiming-for-simultaneous-worldwide-releasesThe numbers listed aren't useful for statistical purposes; combining physical sales with free phone downloads is a great way to make bloated but meaningless numbers. But it still paints a general picture of how big their series are. A lot of western fans don't realise that Puyo Puyo is a big deal in Japan. Actually, that makes me puzzled; because why aren't they releasing Puyo Puyo games in the west in that case? This is especially true these days, when fans are much more accepting of Japanese-styled games. SEGA feat. HATSUNE MIKU Project at 6mil is quite surprising, considering the niche genre it's in and its limited (by design) song selection. β¦New game please? Etrian Odyssey selling only 1.9mil across the whole series surprised me. I was under the impression that it's pretty big. I wish they'd release more figures. Even the ones that don't hit a million can be interesting to read. And I wonder to what extent are they going to revive their idle IPs. Personally hoping for Crazy Taxi, which is the only other SEGA IP I'm interested in. |
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Post by Leon on Oct 20, 2018 14:44:45 GMT -5
The numbers released are less than useless. They include things like toy sales and amusement machines, which makes them useless for any kind of discussion.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Oct 21, 2018 0:25:08 GMT -5
From their wording ("packaged and digital total"), they're counting packaged sales and digital downloads, which doesn't sound like it includes arcade machine sales and toy sales, unless noted as in the case of Puyo Puyo counting AM-registered IDs (referring to Puyo Puyo Quest Arcade IDs). These do, however, include free-to-play mobile downloads, which tends to inflate the numbers disproportionately. Paid downloads also tends to be cheaper than retail games, adding to the uselessness of the figures.
This does not put pachinko-based series into consideration (those figures are the opposite; they don't count video game sales). I'm talking about SEGA here, not Sammy.
Ultimately, I don't really care about how many units do these series sell any more than how important they are in SEGA's eyes, and therefore how likely are they going to get sequels. They're obviously not going to use these figures as their internal metrics, but it does show what kind of statistics are they willing to show the public (because that's exactly what they've done).
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Post by Leon on Oct 24, 2018 13:23:22 GMT -5
It is impossible for Sonic to have more than 800 million game units sold even with free to play game. That would make it bigger than Pokemon, and I guarantee that Sonic isn't bigger than Pokemon.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Jun 27, 2019 7:09:32 GMT -5
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Post by nocturnal YL on Mar 25, 2020 9:10:27 GMT -5
60th.sega.com/SEGA launched a 60th anniversary site. It currently has a SEGA Group timeline, and not much else. It will be accepting fan messages starting from 21 April. The Japanese site also introduced the promotional character Sega Shiro, played by Maito Fujioka, the son of Hiroshi Fujioka of Segata Sanshiro fame.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Apr 21, 2020 13:39:36 GMT -5
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Post by nocturnal YL on May 25, 2020 8:45:11 GMT -5
Even more news for SEGA's 60th anniversary campaign. They're now giving out 366 icons featuring all kinds of SEGA IPs, hardware, toys and even things like buildings and food. Doesn't cover all of their games though. The buttons above the images allow for filtering certain categories of images: All, Sonic, SEGA hardware and accessories, arcade games, consumer games, smartphone games, mecha, and twintails. In a very SEGA-like humourous way, the twintails category returns images of Tails in addition to what you'd otherwise expect. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on May 26, 2020 9:44:56 GMT -5
I'm surprised at some of the hardware and IP Sega chose to represent with those icons. A Master System instead of a Mark III? A tower of power (albeit, the mini version)? Rhythm Thief? Pretty cool, though.
Might have to temporarily change my avatar.
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