Yes, we still have a forum.
Speaking to The Guardian, Shuji Utsumi (the current CEO of Sega America and Europe) – who helped launch PlayStation in North America before joining Sega in 1996 – stated that resurrecting older hardware isn't something he's looking to do:I’m not going for the Mini direction. It’s not me. I want to embrace modern gamers.We are not a retro company. We really appreciate our legacy, we value it, but at the same time, we want to deliver something new – otherwise we’ll become history. That’s not what we’re aiming for.The Guardian later approached Sega for comment on the topic of mini-consoles, and the company reconfirmed what Utsumi said – it has no plans to make more of them. This reaffirms the messaging that has previously come out of Sega's ...
"For character choices, popularity isn't everything. You want normal character, power character, speed characters... Characters who can fly, bastards who shoot beams... You think about a lot of these things while picking your roster."So with all these things to consider, we decided our roster to be Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Psylocke, Venom, Jubilee, Mr. Fantastic, Howard The Duck..."Howard the Duck is a character who's a duck, do you all know about him? People who know know, there was a movie with Lea Thompson in the '80s and he was the main character, that DUCK right there. Did you know that's a Marvel character?"And finally, for the boss we decided on Galactus, the VS series was already well-versed in gigantic bosses (At that point, we figured Onslaught would be impossible to get permission for...)"BUT THEN, when we submitted this list to Marvel, what we got back was 'NO!!'"Iron Man? No. Fantastic Four? No. Venom? No way. Howard the Duck? Absolutely not... No, no way, no how, a complete STORM of rejections."
Among the site's sections was a multipart Producer's Essay written by Capcom's Kenji Kataoka that provided some fascinating insights into the development of the first Marvel vs. Capcom."First, Iron Man... We really wanted him to replace Cyclops as our resident 'Beam Bastard' character...""But, 'No'."There was nothing we could do. I'm so sorry to all the fans. A different company held the copyright for the character, and since he was still under contract for games we couldn't use him. The reason War Machine came into the picture was actually from Marvel's suggestion at this meeting. 'Change the color and use him and it's fine.' ... You say it like it's easy, but in Japan the Iron Man fans won't accept that, YOU KNOW... Haha."At the same time, it turned out that the Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor were under similar restrictions. We even lowered our request to ask for them as background characters... But in front of the contracts in place, we were powerless."
