Haruki Satomi apologizes for low quality games

[Radrappy]

What is this mystical PSO2 creature you speak?

You're right, lost my mind for a second there. 

[Trippled]

One last advice...leave arcade exclusivity behind. Really its stupid at this point.

[Aki-at]

You're right, lost my mind for a second there. 

Next you'll be telling me that there was a third Valkyria Chronicles game released, ha!

One last advice...leave arcade exclusivity behind. Really its stupid at this point.

Completely agree. This is why I hope Virtua Fighter 6 is released for consoles at the same time as arcades, it's so limiting now to ignore the former market for the latter.

[MadeManG74]

Some interesting things of note:

- SEGA has "learned" from Atlus about quality control, I hope they can also learn about marketing in the West.
- Yakuza beat expectations in China, what was the expectation? Hopefully Asia can help the slack in the Japanese industry.
- Satomi recognizes the success story of the Playstation 4, probably the strongest indication of continued Playstation 4 development by SEGA.
- Console announcements at TGS \o/ the fact he mentioned GLOBAL success might be an important thing to consider. We shall see.


Think this only really applies to the third Valkyria title and the fifth Yakuza title, otherwise SEGA was pretty on point with localisation.

Really?
Final Showdown took an awfully long time to make it to consoles and Yakuza 2 & 3 were very slow to translate. I thought they were in limbo for a while as to whether they would ever make it over at all, although I might be wrong.
Not to mention Kenzan! and Isshin never seeing the light of day outside Japan.

[Aki-at]

Really?
Final Showdown took an awfully long time to make it to consoles and Yakuza 2 & 3 were very slow to translate. I thought they were in limbo for a while as to whether they would ever make it over at all, although I might be wrong.
Not to mention Kenzan! and Isshin never seeing the light of day outside Japan.

Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown took just under 2 years to release on consoles, but the original Virtua Fighter 5 took a year and half to come out so the difference in releases was minimal. The game was officially released in arcades in Spring 2011 and then announced at Gamescom the same year coming to console the following year. So the wait really wasn't long, I think people are overstating it.

Yakuza 2 came out late but Yakuza 3/4/Dead Souls all came a year after the initial release.

Kenzan has Kiryu having sex with a child, its not going to fly well with people since it's very very old fashioned. Ishin though was after Yakuza 5, which is when SEGA gave up on the series until Sony revived it.

[MadeManG74]

Kenzan has Kiryu having sex with a child

wat

[Aki-at]

wat

It's a sidemission but it gives you an idea what Kenzan is like.

Haruka also works at a brothel and is an in-training geisha.

[MadeManG74]

Sounds like good times.

Also you're forgetting about VF5:R, which was released in between 5 and FS, which is why the wait seemed so long. And the fact that Sega waited for PS3 was understandable for 5 Vanilla, but there wasn't so much excuse for such a long wait for the later iterations.
I understand them not wanting to ruin their Arcade income by making a fast console port, but still, it got a LOT of backlash from VF fans at the time. I wish I coudl find the video of a guy putting his copy of VF5 through a paper shredder in blind range.

[Moody]

Cool. Just got into playing some Atlus stuff, so I'm curious to see how it affects the rest of SEGA's output. Sounds like they're trying to clean up their act, but whether or not they succeed is up to the future.

[Aki-at]

Sounds like good times.

Also you're forgetting about VF5:R, which was released in between 5 and FS, which is why the wait seemed so long. And the fact that Sega waited for PS3 was understandable for 5 Vanilla, but there wasn't so much excuse for such a long wait for the later iterations.
I understand them not wanting to ruin their Arcade income by making a fast console port, but still, it got a LOT of backlash from VF fans at the time. I wish I coudl find the video of a guy putting his copy of VF5 through a paper shredder in blind range.

Yeah but there really isn't much precedent of SEGA doing this, it's not like they are Capcom and release every single version of their arcade games.

I'd anything there's a precedent of them releasing a vanilla version and then a final version of their arcade title. People expecting multiple iteration weren't looking at history, even when SEGA was considered "good"

[MadeManG74]

Yeah but there really isn't much precedent of SEGA doing this, it's not like they are Capcom and release every single version of their arcade games.

I'd anything there's a precedent of them releasing a vanilla version and then a final version of their arcade title. People expecting multiple iteration weren't looking at history, even when SEGA was considered "good"

I was saying the whole time I figured Sega didn't port 5R due to having something else up their sleeve, which turned out to be Final Showdown. I'm just saying that there was definitely a backlash from the community as 5R was a MAJOR update to the series.

Having said that, they ported both 4 and 4EVO but then skipped Final Tuned.

[SuperSonicEX]

I'd say Final Showdown was worth it though, outside of the audio quality issue.  I really wish they would just release PSO2 in the West with the latest updates, I think that would be a step in the right direction (not the magic bullet that fixes everything).  Kind hope we also do get VF6 announced soon and for the love of god they push it in marketing because:

Some interesting things of note:

- SEGA has "learned" from Atlus about quality control, I hope they can also learn about marketing in the West.
- Yakuza beat expectations in China, what was the expectation? Hopefully Asia can help the slack in the Japanese industry.
- Satomi recognizes the success story of the Playstation 4, probably the strongest indication of continued Playstation 4 development by SEGA.
- Console announcements at TGS \o/ the fact he mentioned GLOBAL success might be an important thing to consider. We shall see.

This has been an ongoing issue with them for YEARS, and I really hope they learn this from Atlus too.  Even if a game they made is great, most times it received little to no press/awareness...worse was Binary Domain, it was expected to be their big hit, but I saw almost no marketing push and best article I could find on it was from Kotaku mocking the game's lack of (marketing) presence.

Think this only really applies to the third Valkyria title and the fifth Yakuza title, otherwise SEGA was pretty on point with localisation.

I still want Valkyria 3 to come out...somehow...even if it is repetitive and made on a shoe string budget.  That and a proper console game from the VC team (doesn't have to be VC4).

Overall, I honestly hope they're serious about this because I would like to see them be successful both critically and financially...and you know make more great games.

[Sharky]

We'll see about this, I dunno. It's hard to tell how much of this is genuine and how much is PR fluff when put on the spot... I really hope they DO start localizing more stuff, even in limited numbers like ATLUS do. I'm ready for higher quality releases and I'm ready for SEGA to bring back some older IPs.

At the moment I kind of don't believe it.

[Aki-at]

This has been an ongoing issue with them for YEARS, and I really hope they learn this from Atlus too.  Even if a game they made is great, most times it received little to no press/awareness...worse was Binary Domain, it was expected to be their big hit, but I saw almost no marketing push and best article I could find on it was from Kotaku mocking the game's lack of (marketing) presence.

I think it's a damning assessment of SEGA Europe/America when the CEO of the company comes out and says:

“We’ve learned a lot about the western market from Atlus. If we can deliver high-quality titles to fans of Japanese games, I think we have a decent chance of making it overseas.”

Like how useless does your Western operation have to be that a small time publisher the parent company acquired is giving them more input in how to market your games.

Bodes well for the future of titles like Yakuza and 7th Dragon I feel.

We'll see about this, I dunno. It's hard to tell how much of this is genuine and how much is PR fluff when put on the spot... I really hope they DO start localizing more stuff, even in limited numbers like ATLUS do. I'm ready for higher quality releases and I'm ready for SEGA to bring back some older IPs.

At the moment I kind of don't believe it.

Think about the last time you remember Satomi seating down and giving a major interview about SEGA.

[MadeManG74]

I wonder if this has anything to do with Sega making TV shows from dead franchises? Will they try to pass a few thousand volts through them with iterations before they make Streets of Rage: The Movie?