Haruki Satomi apologizes for low quality games

[George]

Updated the front story: http://segabits.com/blog/2015/07/07/sega-japan-ceo-talks-about-earning-gamers-trust-learning-from-atlus-and-focusing-on-quality-titles/

Even IGN, Gamespot and stuff reported it wrong. Siliconera should come out and say they made a mistake, tho it really doesn't matter. It did the PR job it needed to.

[Sharky]

Why assume AM2 will build an entirely new engine for VF6?  They can modify and build upon the VF5 engine... Similar to how Naughty Dog is using a modified version of their last gen engine on Uncharted 4.

Well the VF5 engine is like, a decade old now so I would hope they're not going to use it, even if its modified. I'm sure they wont though, each new VF game gets its number because its a huge leap forward in tech. Otherwise it would just be another iteration of VF5.

[Team Andromeda]

I think the Hedgehog Engine is great and they shouldn't ditch the tech... While Unreal is good it's only free until you sell a certain number of units then you're handing over a percentage to Epic Games... Instead I think SEGA should set about building their own multipurpose engine for all internal developer to use. (SEGA West or Japan I don't care.)

Unreal III wasn't that great imo onthe consoels and only really good for Epic games . I hated how many Unreal 3 games looked on the consoels , never mind how most Unreal 3 games on consoels couldn't get anywhere near 60 fps  . Unreal IV is much better and I'll have no issues with SEGA Japan making dual use of Unreal IV and also having its own In-House next gen  engine for its major AAA productions , Just like the likes of EA do with their Frostbite ,and Ignite engines but Bioware also make use of Unreal tech too

At the moment SEGA Japan aren't even on Unreal IV ate they?

Maybe, maybe... But I'd hate for something like Virtua Fighter 6 to be on Unreal Engine. The problem with 3rd party engines is that games all tend to look similar, with the same lighting and same textures

I much rather developers use their own In-House engiens for the major Big games as then you aren't limited by other people tools and libraries and can push your own tool sets. Always liked it how Team Andromeda refused to use the SGL tool set as they felt it would limit Zwei and Saga and rather great and use their own as they could push your own code and to this very day I hated the fact that Rally II used the Win Ce tools and not SEGA's own, while it was great for porting the PC code over to the DC and helped get it on-line early its hurt the games visuals a lot.


SEGA Japan used to have some of the best R&D and artists around . It be nice if Sammy allowed them to show that off for the next gen and really let them go to town   

[George]

The only Japanese studio at SEGA to release a Playstation 4 game has been The Yakuza team, so no, they haven't started using it in game productions yet. I mean outside of the Marzda Unreal 4 demo reels. I don't think we have to worry about SEGA using the tools considering a lot of indie games learn and pick up the engine really quickly. Most of the games on it so far have been more indie than big triple A titles: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Category:Games

A lot of TBD dates, the engine is young. We shall see what SEGA has in store...

[George]

Talking about Unreal 4, it has Yu Suzuki's approval.


Nicolas Zurini - how did you consider using Unreal Engine 4 instead of other middleware (Unity for example)? What were the criteria?


YS: It was the color. I believe UE4 could express the "shenmue color". The atmosphere, the humidity, a world with "smell"

Posted the transcript from the new Yu Suzuki Twitter Q&A here: http://segabits.com/blog/2015/07/11/yu-suzukis-twitter-qa-part-2-shenmue-3-in-game-footage-wont-be-shown-until-2017/

[Team Andromeda]

The only Japanese studio at SEGA to release a Playstation 4 game has been The Yakuza team, so no, they haven't started using it in game productions yet. I mean outside of the Marzda Unreal 4 demo reels.

It be nice to see SEGA Japan at least sign up the use the engine and also make a next gen engine of its own , at the moment it's got nither though I suspect Sonic Team will put theirs to use .


Most 3rd parties and most Teams in Japan are already way ahead of SEGA Japan at the moment . Lets hope Sammy will now at least let SEGA Japan lose on the consoels and give them some serious R&D funding

[Kuronoa]

Many 3rd party companies are cross platform with Vita or PS3, so they aren't too ahead of Sega in terms of pure PS4 releases.

[MadeManG74]

Maybe, maybe... But I'd hate for something like Virtua Fighter 6 to be on Unreal Engine. The problem with 3rd party engines is that games all tend to look similar, with the same lighting and same textures... Even though its not, its hard to explain but it losses something.

So would you have Virtua Fighter 6 made on Unreal if you were in charge?

As Aki-at pointed out, the games can look vastly different using the same engine.

In particular for VF6, I would ideally like it to be on their new arcade board hardware, but that's just entirely due to tradition. I wouldn't mind seeing it on UE4 either, I don't think it would affect the game in the slightest.

Just a little interjection real quick.

You can still buy a traditional UE license. Companies/developers are allowed to negotiate a custom license with payment upfront with Epic games if they so choose w/o percentage payments.

https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing

Thanks for posting this, I was about to say I was sure that you could still pay an up-front license fee. I figured the percentage option was mainly for the indie developers who needed to keep start up costs low as possible.

I would say that in many cases using Unreal is fine... But I guess I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to 3rd party engines, for certain games... I like the idea of build from the ground up in house especially for games like Virtua Fighter, Sonic and Total War. Other games I would be fine with SEGA using Unreal... Yakuza could probably benefit from it.

As much as I think UE4 is excellent and probably the best thing to happen to JPN devs in years, I kinda want VF6 to run on AM2's own engine, one that is tailor-made to develop a 3D fighting game.  AM2 are tech wizards and I can't wait to see what they'd do with a current-gen VF.

Was Model 1, 2, 3, Naomi and Lindbergh really built specifically for VF though? I would have thought they were general purpose engines, considering they were the workhorses for all of Sega's arcade output in their respective era's.

What do you think UE4 couldn't do that a purpose built engine could?

[Pao]

Was Model 1, 2, 3, Naomi and Lindbergh really built specifically for VF though? I would have thought they were general purpose engines, considering they were the workhorses for all of Sega's arcade output in their respective era's.

Aren't those Arcade Boards and not engines?

What do you think UE4 couldn't do that a purpose built engine could?

I have no idea. I'm a tech illiterate, but from what I've read from developers over the years is that the a purpose built engine is likely to be more efficient at what it does than an all-purpose engine like UE4.   Because they'd specifically optimize it's rendering techniques to suit the nature of a certain game.   Like how id tech 5 is excellent with FPS games, but it shat the bed when it was used for a TPS game like The Evil Within.

Anyway, while I prefer AM2 to create VF6 on their own tech, I'm not actively against UE4 at all.  It looks great and I hear it's simple and fast.

Tekken 7 looks mediocre though, but I doubt it's the engine's fault. They have another UE4 game coming:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_WEgUDdYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIl2-5f8NTo

[Trippled]

http://gamenewsblogz.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-9889.html

Found the whole interview. From what I decipher on Google Translate: Spunning off their console division and arcade division into small companies will have a similar effect to Sega Networks...mainly boosting decision making and quality.

It talks about how when it was Sega Corp. having about 5 different businesses (console, arcade, mobile, arcade game, amusement faciliies) under one CEO lacked a clear vision and had sluggish decision making. In the 90's this worked obviously, since staff was small and less overhead. Today, this doesnt work.

From what I can gather, like Chain Chronicles before it, plans of using arcade staff to do a PC Online game, will also happen. For PC, Sega considers two markets. One is Steam, and other is Japan F2P such PSO2 and soon to be The World End Eclipse. He still talks segmenting the market, with western developed games for the west and same with Japan. (personally I never liked this strategy)

I may be misunderstanding this, but Sonic, Yakuza (this might Asia only) and Persona are regarded as the main brands for consoles I guess. Again would love a translation, or really lets wait and see. Many sites picked up the TGS announcement as a sort of "worldwide redemption", which I think is wrong to pick upon it.

[Aki-at]

Haruki responded to Destructoid:

[Update: Sega provided the following statement to Destructoid today, July 22: "Seeing our fans across the world respond to our recent interview with Famitsu, lets us know we've made the right first step in acknowledging who we are and where we want to be. Sega is dedicated to bringing you quality gaming experiences and becoming a brand you love and trust again." -- Haruki Satomi, CEO of Sega Games]

http://www.destructoid.com/sega-knows-it-betrayed-fans-admits-atlus-taught-it-how-to-be-better-295533.phtml

I wouldn't class it as fluff either considering he could conveniently ignore it since it was for a Japanese magazine too, seems like he's serious about moving SEGA forward on a global scale. Which SEGA this is though is the real question.

[TimmiT]

Taxman said this on NeoGAF:

I've also had the opportunity to meet Haruki at a couple of E3s when he was heading up SOA's digital dept. Great guy, and was definitely a helping hand in getting the Sonic CD, 1 & 2 stuff rolling. I'm glad to see him do well in the company.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=172455407&postcount=62

[SuperSonicEX]

Interesting, I certainly hope he is sincere about it and this leads to some actual improvements/changes.

Right now with what happened with Tembo, I'm a little uncertain with what they're pushing and how to get (positive) awareness.

[Tad]

To be fair, stuff like that does just happen sometimes.

[Team Andromeda]

Hope this will mark a change not just from people with-in SEGA but also the SEGA defence force on here too . Been saying for years SEGA lost its way and was not the same corp and was not pleasing its own fans .

Hope the change will mean SEGA coming out and backing the consoles and with a next gen multi platform game and engine. Would really like the game to be SOJ own take on Dark Souls, with a On-Line action role playing game fantasy from the PSO and Sonic Team.