Sega is just not going to throw money on things that simple isn't working anymore. Sega has gone too japan centric, that was clear after they became a third party and started to focus on the games that was selling rather than the ones that weren't. And in japan Sega games was selling from 2003, while in the west apart from a few titles, most SOJ game weren't. They probably need to go back to the centre again and make games for everyone. Not just make a game for japan market or a game for western market. Remember western games DONT sell in japan regardless of what some people will have you think.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/gta-v-grand-theft-auto-2476434The game - which is produced by British developer Rockstar North - sold a colossal 360,115 copies on PlayStation 3 and 26,612 on Xbox 360.
Those figures dwarf the 246,000 that Vice City shifted back in 2004.
2008's Grand Theft Auto 4 sold 132,676 on PS3 and 33,648 on Xbox 360.
http://www.destructoid.com/call-of-duty-ghosts-sells-over-200-000-in-japanese-debut-266170.phtmlIf I try harder I'm sure I'll find more instances, but the thrust of this is that I'm certain that point can't be right.
I'd also like to take issue with the suggestion that "people complain about games like Yakuza and then don't buy it." That makes no sense to me, and when I read it on NeoGAF I don't get it either. It seems cartoonish to invest oneself in a horse race for which there is no incentive to do so - and even assuming this is the case for some proportion of people on the internet (which is probably the case, but not nearly that much), there's no way it's sizable enough to account for the lack of sales success in the West. This hypothetical outraged audience would have to be maybe twice the LTD sales of every individual Yakuza game (say, 50k plus a hypothetical 50k.) The real issue is that there don't seem to be enough people presently interested in the franchise in the West and that the casual consciousness on what kind of game Yakuza is, perhaps due to marketing and never quite breaking through, is all wrong. There's a modest hardcore following right now.
Anyway, talking about the Capcom dilema, they had a plenty of IP's created in JP but they worked like a globally IP in mind and be published like that. So, plus the same lucrative brand of franchises to buy, SS need to have anymore reasons to try buy Capcom? I think is the perfect time to discuss that
In my mind, limited as my understanding of the industry is, as a gamer there isn't really a good reason for Capcom to be bought by Sega Sammy but for the fact it means they continue to exist. ROJM bringing up leveraging their IPs for Pachinko makes probably the most sense - RE5 Pachinko made a ton of money, I remember reading once - but there's no appeal to that for people who play games.
But similar to the Crazy Taxi dilemma pointed out, Capcom franchises risk obsolescence because of their failed risks and the changing state of Japanese game development means they output fewer non-mobile games or safer titles. Safer being compilations, expansions, ports to VC or eShop, etc.
The problem is that Capcom doesn't know what games to make, and they had external partnerships that were not nearly as successful as they hoped (Remember Me and DmC). While of course, some worked out (Dead Rising 2, Ducktales maybe). Also, RE6 staff was far too bloated. Was there truth to what Seth Killian said, when he said that Capcom thought the West didn't like Mega Man? It certainly wasn't a strong seller before it went on de facto hiatus.