SEGA Europe Jurgen Post on IPs, Digital and outsourcing distribution

[max_cady]

It's a pretty big article, so I'll summarize what was said on it:

.SEGA Europe will effectively closing down a number of local branches in Europe and Australia. Publishing and distribution will be done through other companies. Koch Media will be doing most the European countries. The Benelux operations will be done by Level 03. Australia's SEGA stuff will be handled by 5 Star Games. I should point out that the Benelux and Australia branches are new companies founded by staff of these recentely terminated positions;

.Jurgen doesn't add anything dramatically new about the focus on major IPs such as Total War, Aliens, Sonic and Football Manager. He doesn't rule out other IPs besides the "AAA", but that was still the same position as before;

.Jurgen wants to focus heavily on Digital as well, his quote: "It's a focus on those four core IP, and in addition to that we'll have digital. And digital still means 50 - 75 releases every year, so that's still a big number." 50-75 digital releases, that seems like an awful lot;

[MadeManG74]

RIP Sega Australia.... again.

[max_cady]

Feels bad, man.

SEGA Portugal was terminated years ago and we had the same third party distributor for eons, it seems.

The picture that Eurogamer.net, seriously...

[crackdude]

Ecofilmes :3

[MadeManG74]

I wonder if this is the reason that Anarchy Reigns got delayed to next year?

[max_cady]

Not sure, Platinum Games is an external dev so there's a possibility that they were unaware of those changes. But if that was the case, it would explain why Anarchy Regins was dealyed, maybe Koch Media thought it was better to release it in 2013. But not sure about the US, though. Koch Media likely has no say in the US market.

Interestingly enough, it's not just SEGA that's turning to Koch Media for publishing and distribution. Tecmo Koei, THQ and a couple of smaller devs are also turning to them for it.

Here's the messed up part, THQ and Tecmo announced their outsourcing to Koch Media almost a month ago. I googled it and barely any game websites covered it, SEGA does it and it's on every friggin' website literally minutes after the story breaks.

[MadeManG74]

I meant more that maybe they didn't release it west because they knew they were shutting down distribution arms around the world and wanted to wait until the new guys were proven/settled in before releasing Anarchy.

[tarpmortar]

Sega Australia needs to be downsized, not closed, and then needs to be put on porting Sega's games to PC. If they would do their PC ports in-house vs. Devil's Details they'd save money over time.

Stupid decision.

[MadeManG74]

^Sega Australia's distrubution arm needed to be closed. There is no need to handle your own distribution in Australia when you have so few releases a year and designs on lowering that number further. I don't know what's happening with any developers in Australia, but as far I know this was concerning the distribution side of things.

The Managing Director of Sega Australia has now set up his own distributor called Five Star Games and will handle all of Sega's stuff in Aus. This is a good move on Sega's part.

[tarpmortar]

^Sega Australia's distrubution arm needed to be closed. There is no need to handle your own distribution in Australia when you have so few releases a year and designs on lowering that number further. I don't know what's happening with any developers in Australia, but as far I know this was concerning the distribution side of things.

The Managing Director of Sega Australia has now set up his own distributor called Five Star Games and will handle all of Sega's stuff in Aus. This is a good move on Sega's part.

I can get the publishing arm, but Sega Studios Australia is down there and in the long term it would be more profitable to port PC games in house than via outsourcing, I am arguing that they be left open and used to port Sega's games to PC.