Cognition Dissemination: Please Save My Sega

We figured the worst was over for Sega upon exiting the console race after the Dreamcast failed to take hold of the gaming market, a little over a decade ago. The Sega we knew and loved was crumbling beneath us, leaving nothing but a semblance of its former self to make software for systems they once considered their competitors. You didn’t even have to pay too much attention to see that their post-DC software output was incredibly disappointing. For every superlative title like Panzer Dragoon Orta, you had two misfires like Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg and Virtua Quest.

But something began to happen recently. Many Japanese companies have struggled to keep up with HD development, but slowly and surely, Sega was starting to get it. With an equal amount of quality internally-developed titles like Valkyria Chronicles and the Yakuza games and outsourced titles they were merely publishing like Bayonetta and Resonance of Fate, Sega was becoming a force to be reckoned with again — the one fans were hoping to see when they went multiplatform.

They were doing some good, so of course disaster had to strike them. On Friday, Sega reported a staggering loss of 7.1 billion yen, citing difficulties in their American and European subsidiaries. They said both would be streamlined for sustained profitability. Though there’s been no word on what’s happening at Sega Europe, Sega of America had a big number of layoffs, including the entire QA division. They also said some games in development would be cancelled, and that their focus would be on well-established IPs like Sonic, Aliens, Football Manager, and Total War. That’s an interesting observation considering they cancelled a game in one of those franchises a few years ago. If there’s a franchise you like that’s not among those four, and that’s not a digital download, you may want to start worrying about it.

Not to wish layoffs on anyone, but it would have been better if it happened to a more deserving Japanese company. Perhaps one lower on the “ethics” rung, like Capcom and Konami; especially the latter. Sega is the best big third-party publisher in terms of their quality game output at the moment, and now they’re paying for it. That’s not to say they’re exempt from any criticism, though. They released a good number of games either at terrible times or bereft of any significant advertising. Valkyria Chronicles was released in the middle of November 2008, amidst a very busy holiday season. Both Vanquish and the recently released Binary Domain had very quiet releases, despite them being in popular genres. Hopefully they work on fixing this, though it may not be on a retail release scale for the
near future.

This begs the question as to what’s happening with some games they have in development that we know of. It was recently announced that Anarchy Reigns would be getting Bayonetta as a guest character, but they haven’t mentioned this outside of Japan. The guys on developer Platinum Games’ Twitter account didn’t seem to know what was going on with it, though they subsequently deleted all tweets relating to speculation about its status. It has to be almost done at this point, so it will likely still release. The real concern should be reserved for anything after that.

There was a rumor that Bayonetta 2 was going to be revealed sometime last year, which unfortunately didn’t pan out. It’s likely that a good portion of its development team has moved over to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, meaning the game might have been put on hold. That doesn’t sound like it would satisfy Sega, which might be why there’s a rumor going around saying that it’s been cancelled. The action genre has already been dealt a blow with the critically-maligned Ninja Gaiden 3, and who knows what shape DmC: Devil May Cry will take at this point.

Speaking of non-established franchises: while Yakuza 5 will still release and sell fine in Japan, what does it mean for its localizations? While the recent release of Dead Souls probably isn’t going to set sales charts on fire due to not fixing the wonky shooting controls, the previous games have a helped establish a dedicated cult audience. And with how huge the newest game is sounding, they wouldn’t want to miss out on this one. Whether it comes over depends on how much they sell relative to their localization budget. Since they’re not dubbing them, they shouldn’t too much; but there’s a lot of text to translate.

As of right now, the future for Sega, especially outside of Japan, lies in the sales of digital titles. It turns out there was a good reason why Sega made the decision to sell Virtua Fighter  5: Final Showdown on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network, along with why they’re selling an easily-profitable (and desirable) port like Jet Set Radio. They also have the Sega Ages Online series coming; though they’ve only been announced for Japan officially, we know they’re coming west too. Hopefully Sega gets back on track soon. They deserve it.