So does SEGA care about Metacritic?

[Trippled]

Recently publishers seem to have taken notice of Metacritic, and some have taken in equal into what sales the game is gonna have. While logical with western publishers, even Square Enix seem to taken notice and estimate sales with it, in their finacial report.

Sega has done a similar thing, when delisting Sonic games:
 http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/12/sega-looking-to-improve-sonic-strategy-reducing-supply-of-old/


Also when bringing back old IP's, they mention that they definitly want an "85+" title.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/239411/interviews/segas-mike-hayes-pt1/


Have they give up on that? Was it something that the western branch wanted, but it just coudn't get through the japanese corporate board?
In their financial reports, money if the only thing that matter, obviously. But western companies include critical acclaim in their reports too.


Feedback seems at least important to Sega now recently. We have seen it with the Lost World patch, Sonic 4 Episode 2 etc.
Let's not forget how much of an improvement Alien Isolation is compared to the previous game.
So at least they won't continue to throw down shit our throats like they have been for a period, and didn't even list to feedback.

[Aki-at]

I think they do because outside of Sonic Boom they've had a stiller year.

Alien: Isolation, Company of Heroes: Ardennes Assualt, Football Manager 2014, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva 2nd F and the Valkyria Chronicles port were all fantastic efforts and reached over 80+ on Metacritic. We'll also have a better idea once the new Total War game releases and what it does to fix the bad taste Rome II left on the franchise if they really do still want the best possible scores.

[MadeManG74]

I don't think anyone WANTS to have a bad reception from the gaming media, but at the same time I don't think they'll lose sleep if meta-critic doesn't have a top rating for a game, so long as it makes money for them.

Review scores are just another part of the marketing machine now.

[Happy Cat]

Time to take Sonic Boom off store shelves as per SEGA's metacritic policy.

[JRcade19]

Sega? Possibly.

Creative Assembly IS obsessed with metacritic however

And then, through production, actually, we do what we call "Metacritic analysis." So we will break those features down into subsets, and we both look at it from a player's point of view, and a reviewer's point of view, and we'll weigh certain features as to how we see players and reviewers look at them, and they'll build up to a 100 percent score, and then we'll judge where we feel we are on those individual feature sets, and see the momentum on those and the velocity on those, too.
And so if we see one flat line and it's not where we want it to be, we then will cut it. Well, we'll cut it really late in the day. I think teams are really scared about doing 90 percent of the work and then cutting it. It's kind of like, "Well, it's nearly finished; I... I've done all the work! Please don't cut it! I'm sure I can make it better." And we're fairly brutal on that.
I'd much rather not see a feature in the game but still pay for it than risk... You know, every step of the way -- from the beginning to the end -- we're talking about a 90 percent Metacritic. That's our goal. That's what we tell Sega. And we communicate that through graphs, basically, of where we think we are.

[Trippled]

Time to take Sonic Boom off store shelves as per SEGA's metacritic policy.

Sonic Lost World too if they were that harsh about Unleashed and the Storybook games.

[Aki-at]

Speaking of Creative Assembly, I do recall in an interview that SEGA told them to go and win them awards with Alien: Isolation. I think the title speaks for itself considering how SEGA retrained themselves in ordering CA to make a shoot shoot bang bang Alien game and go down the survival horror route.

[ROJM]

Yes but SOJ wasn't on the ball this year western wise.SLW is atrocious..SONIC BOOM speaks for itself and the sales kinda reflect that, it was SEGA Europe that basically had the hit titles this year..including the port of VC.