What? You talk about published games not being relevant at all, yet you talk about them. All of these games were published by Sega or made by Western Studios. And if we can count western devs now, Sega has now Relic, Creative Assembly, Hardlight, Three Rings...yeah. And that is as much as the "10" consumer divisions they had in the DC Era...
Also AM1, 2 and 3 are still doing games. On Lindbergh they have released 4 racing games (R-Tuned, Race TV, Hummer, Harley Davidson...), HotD 4, EX, 2Spicy Ghost Squad Sequel and the Let's go.... games. Also there are the 2 interresting Shining Cross and Border Break games, that are frequently updated. Lots of stuff on Lindbergh/Ringedge. Overall tough yeah the Model 2/3 stuff was more and better at the time obviously.
YES, not many games got ports, but let's just take a look at the output. It's not as revolutionary and groundbreaking as it was back in the day, but the quantity isn't much lower at all.
I see the point you are making. The problem i think is people can't seperate Sega the publisher from Sega the developer from sega the company. This is both compounded by the fact that Sega use to be in the position that Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo still occupy.
Now as a developer is Sega still relevant? Anyone who has played BINARY DOMAIN can attest to their strengh of executing good game mechanics and ideas. The problem is how Sega has acted as a publisher since they've become a third party. Sega as a third party has sucked. it sucked back in the golden era of atari and colectovision and until recently it was a bad experience with the xbox Ps2 generation of systems.
Sega's strengh to me as a company producing game systems for home entertainment was that they always managed to supply a type of choice to someone intrested in their products. The reason i gave the Megadrive as an example is simply because that was the era where a sega consumer had a choice of playing a sega arcade port, a SOJ consumer title or a Sega west/american title and a title that they decided to publish because the original developer copuldn't afford to publish or didn't/wasn't allowed to publish the games themselves. Because of what happened, the Sega brand went beyond what it meant previously and evolved into something else. Before then it meant SPACE HARRIER, OUTRUN AFTERBURNER, the best of the arcade. Sega was the best of the arcade and still was an arcade brand. But that changed drastically. By the time the megadrive went kaput the name meant SONIC, ECCO THE DOLPHIN, VIRTUA FIGHTER, TOEJAM AND EARL etc. it symbolises the best of both console and arcade development. Its meaning had changed. It was no coincidence that sega's succesful period was when all the divisions at that time from SOJ to Sega of america were working to produce the best games they could either working to create a great sequel in Sonic 2 or giving the company a persona to draw in the crowd.
But during Sega's form as a third party while there has been strong and excellent titles, you could effectivly count them on all fingers. But during 2008-2011, things changed. During this period Sega started at least to act like they once were. You saw at least more arcade ports or should i say relavent arcade ports, SOJ developed titles which some were actually being localised, strong japanese second party support and good Sega western titles. I defy anyone here say they weren't at least spoilt for choice with what sega was offering as a third party at that time, whether you liked the games or not. Even the digital titles that were being released from sega was at least different and interesting to what they are a t the moment(hopefully this will change) Sega isn't just about SOJ or Sega west or whatever but a combination of these things, strong titles that made the company as unique in the nineties as they were during 2008-2011. When Sega fires on all cylinders they are unstoppable. Unfortunatly some of the attitudes that helped in their downfall still exists today. One such mentality is that "the game will speak for it self" and "we dont need to market it". That may work in the arcades when Sega titles easily stand out but much to BINARY DOMAIN's chargrin as well as a few others doesn't work in the consumer field.
Just because its a western title which sega either helped setup or acquired doesn't make it less sega. The sad truth at this moment in time is that the sega west titles have been saving the consumer division from having a disastrous financial report.
I'm not a fan of the recent arcade output because its just endless repeats of the same game(s) and that half of the titles released have been geared towards younger gamers or worse, gambling. But most people wouldn't know that because a lot of the titles have never been ported, it seemed that they were starting to do so a few years back by porting at least the best of these games but that was before this digital focus announcement.
As for number of teams. Well if you just count the SOJ official teams then yes but the reality is there were so many sub teams and attache contract teams within the company from the MD era onwards its hard to really count the actual teams they did have. And that's including the western teams Sega had acquired or formed at any previous time.
I mean during the DC era you not only had the 10 "lost" teams of Sega but you also had Crazy Game/climax Graphix or whatever they called them selves making titles for sega like ILLBLEED on a contract basis, Wrap graphics were effectivly creating second party games exclusivly for sega back in the saturn era and into the DC era which sega for some reason still control their IP and so on. Even Ancient's titles a team which more or less formed within sega much like camelot and Climax were a sub team that was never properly part of the sega setup but still associated with Sega. And after the DC era companies like Hitmaker, Sonic Team and Overworks were subcontracting their games to smaller teams to develop the titles on their slate. So yes we can pick off the official teams but the reality is there were more teams making games for sega than people like to think.
If anything SOJ is been man handled by management rather than lack of creative vision, which is something TA has eluded to.
So the point you make,Trip, is valid and correct but i feel many people need to understand that Sega's position in this market has always been a unique and different one. And long may it continue.
