Rhys from Awesome Games writes: 'While they’ve made some questionable business decisions over the last few years (but let’s face it, what publisher hasn’t?), it goes without saying that Sega still make brilliant games. Which is why it kills me that they keep a lot of these titles in their home country of Japan. Not just any old games either, we’re talking about releases that have scored rather highly in Japanese publications, such as Ryu ga Gotoku 5 and the Hatsune Miku franchise.'
SEGA has announced Fearless: Year of Shadow, a campaign that celebrates Sonic the Hedgehog and his brooding acquaintance, Shadow.
GamesIndustry.biz writes: "Relic is best known for the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War games, and recently developed the new Age of Empires for Microsoft. Relic will transition to an independent studio and will no-longer be part of the Sega group of studios.
The majority of the 240 job cuts are across Creative Assembly and Sega Europe, while there will be a ‘small number’ cut from Sega HARDLight. There was no mention of other Sega UK studios, including Two Point Studios and Sports Interactive."
Shame about Creative Assembly, they should have just been allowed to do an Alien Isolation sequel.
It was that garbage coh 3 that did them in only a special team can make a sequel worse in every way even though it was a 10 year gap and the same era.
Two Point Studios and Sports Interactive probably run on a shoe string budget so that fits into SEGA better lol
Sega had such a turbulent existence from the mid-90s to when they dropped out of console manufacturing entirely in 2001, it’s understandable if you’ve never heard of the Genesis Nomad.
... but I've been a gamer for over 25 years now, LOVED my Sega Megadrive (Genesis), but Sega simply has a reputation for repeatedly being just downright STUPID (SegaCD, 32X, The extremely poor marketing for Saturn and especially the Dreamcast, etc etc)
I believe a lot of companies overestimate the importance of a game having cultural specific content that EVERYONE can relate to, or understand.
I also believe a lot of those companies underestimate the gamers, who they believe to be too stupid and ignorant to 'accept' new stuff they might not know about.
Instead of worrying about if western audiences will 'understand' hostess-bars, or 'idols', or whatever, Sega should just slap some subtitles on their games and release them, and the market will tell you what they will 'accept' and 'like'.
In the end, it often turns out that western markets will very quickly adjust to whatever strange quirky 'Japanese' stuff is thrown at them, and most will actually enjoy it and like it.
Nobody is going to go: yeah, 'I won't buy Yakuza 5 cause I don't really know what the whole deal is about Pachinko or KoiKoi!'
Of course not. they'll just play the game, and enjoy it, and those aspects they might not 'get' or understand, they'll just skip, or they'll look up some info online and try and learn about it. No big deal.
However, when the developer/publisher is actively REMOVING content simply out of fear that some might not 'get it', then you WILL have people deciding they won't buy the game anymore, cause they'd be upset about getting an incomplete butchered game!
Personally, I love it when a game throws new original cultural stuff at me. I don't want every game I play to be in familiar American cities with familiar mini-games and the usual characters and quests. I want variety.