Haruki Satomi apologizes for low quality games

[Team Andromeda]

In Europe Sega games are held in good regard.

Held is quite different from sales. In general the DC and its software is held in High regard sales are totally different. SEGA Europe might do well on the PC but they haven't always done great on the console side of software sales in Europe .

PS has always had the hardware sales over MS in Europe, but MS always had the advantage over SONY in Hardware to software sales ratio. Which is why 3rd parties made money even off the back of the X-Box. Tthe One is no different and also the One is doing well in the USA too and you can expect with TR and Halo 5 coming out this Fall for the One to be a sales monster inthe USA this Christmas .

So SEGA Japan should back both and make games for the West and forget about Japan other than the mobile/HH really   

[Trippled]

So SEGA Japan should back both and make games for the West and forget about Japan other than the mobile/HH really

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I also remember them saying that they didn't gear up for mobile soon enough - I think they would have been better of not developing Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls, and yearly iterations and instead grow mobile even earlier. Instead they should of have focused on Binary Domain earlier, and solely focus on every Yakuza being a Yakuza 5 step up. Then the mobile division would have established sooner, and next gen could have been entered much sooner on a global scale.

[Team Andromeda]

I think they would have been better of not developing Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls, and yearly iterations and instead grow mobile even earlier

.


I would agree and to me Ubisoft should be doing the same with AC now - That like Yakuza is a game series fast running out of idea's and needs a couple of years off and a end to spin offs and yearly updates.

Then the mobile division would have established sooner, and next gen could have been entered much sooner on a global scale.

SEGA was on mobile early on . I think the mistake is having its main Arcade and console teams making games for mobile at the expense of their Console or Arcade titles and I think Sammy cut far to much of SEGA's R&D Budget and it showed over the last few years .  Yes SEGA Japan again joinned the next gen far too late, but  they still have enought time and games like a Multi Platform Sonic, PSO and some sort of big Budget multi platform game for SEGA Japan could get the fans looking forward to SEGA stuff again .


Also SEGA needs to put more of its classic games on the PSN and XBox Live starting with Model 3 and Model 2 ports of SEGA Rally II and Sega Rally

[Aki-at]

In Europe Sega games are held in good regard.

Yep, Sonic still gets higher scores here and the series continues to sell well, I actually wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Sonic's sales comes from UK + Spain + Portugal + France more so than America.

Their console games seem to do alright, stuff like Alien do extremely well and I know Bayonetta did about 200,000 in the UK but you have the usual low sellers like Yakuza and Miku (Though the latter is getting a retail release so that's something.)

[Aki-at]

I also remember them saying that they didn't gear up for mobile soon enough - I think they would have been better of not developing Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls, and yearly iterations and instead grow mobile even earlier. Instead they should of have focused on Binary Domain earlier, and solely focus on every Yakuza being a Yakuza 5 step up. Then the mobile division would have established sooner, and next gen could have been entered much sooner on a global scale.

Not sure a Yakuza 5 step up every Yakuza game is possible considering the market. After it failed to be a hit in the West the series was doomed to be on a moderate budget. Unless we can squeeze another 500,000 sales from somewhere, it would have been too risky to pump out an upgrade every game.

We were lucky we got Binary Domain that helped offset the extra development costs for Yakuza 5 but after Binary Domain failed I'm not sure how likely they are at developing another major game to offset the engine costs. That being said Japanese developers/publishers are incredibly slow, 5 years for Persona 5, 8 years for Final Fantasy XV, 4 years for Metal Gear Solid V, 4 years for Deep Down etc they need to learn from their Western counterparts about efficient design processes.

[SuperSonicEX]

Would that include maybe developing more mid-tier/"B-Type" games? maybe work with the Western dev teams to create a universal engine?

With games such as Binary Domain and Yakuza, I really think that the Western branches should work with Japan and try to market/bring attention to the Japanese games.  They obviously have potential, they just need the right push (or in BD's case, an actual one)...which is something they can learn from Atlus.

[Nirmugen]

It's interesting that mostly all of their releases from this year were pushed to Fall/Winter release date even if they announced for Summer.
 
Maybe they have something in plans at least for their Western side of things.

BTW, George or any adm. ,change the name of the CEO in the title for Haruki Satomi. His grumpy pachinko dad didn't do those interviews.

[SuperSonicEX]

One thing I forgot to mention about Binary Domain, I'm curious as to why there was no BTS videos like a number of games like to do with MoCap actors/game directors talking about the experience...seems like something easy to do to maybe hype some attention and kind of fun to see how things were going.  Would have love to have seen what was originally planned from the initial teaser trailer to what came out in the final version.

[Team Andromeda]

With games such as Binary Domain and Yakuza, I really think that the Western branches should work with Japan and try to market/bring attention to the Japanese games.  They obviously have potential, they just need the right push (or in BD's case, an actual one)...which is something they can learn from Atlus.

Yakuza is never going to work in the West now, SEGA tried and the west doesn't want it, in enough numbers sadly. So unless SEGA make the game take part inthe West and introduce western characters into the mix, its pointless really. BD was an amazing game , sadly letdown but poor P&R (well in had next to zero push the West), no 2 or 4 Player On-Line co-op (a massive mistake) and coming some 2 or so years too late.

Those are things that can be fixed and adressed with a sequel and imo SEGA should give it another crack. Also along with a next Gen Sonic a hope that Border Down sequel would be made for the consoles, I like to see the ST/PSO Team make their own version of Dark Souls and Online Adventure RPG for the consoles. SEGA Japan did so much to get consoles and console gamers On-Line when the tech and infrastructure and appetite for on-line gaming just wasn't there, now it is SEGA Japan should again make a massive push for On-Line gaming on the consoles.

SEGA should also make another Rally game IMO. The market for racers is at last coming back and I think there's a open market for a semi realistic fun racer like Rally 

[Trippled]

SEGA should also make another Rally game IMO. The market for racers is at last coming back and I think there's a open market for a semi realistic fun racer like Rally 

The market is open for any arcade type of sports game. Virtua Tennis 5 and a new Crazy Taxi especially. I think they would do well. Sega Rally, not sure.

[Team Andromeda]

The market is open for any arcade type of sports game. Virtua Tennis 5 and a new Crazy Taxi especially

The market for tennis games isn't that big , but SEGA should continue with VT series both in the Arcades and home I don't think its loss maker in either market and the quailty bar as always been there  . CT time and day is over imo and there is no way people would pay full price for a game like CT in todays market , but maybe for hh and mobile it be a winner

Sega Rally, not sure.

Driving games are back selling well and even Codemasters is doing well with its new Dirt game and going back to the series routes . That what SEGA Japan should do with Rally IV and build in what they did so well in terms of content and 10 year mode in Rally II only with the controls of Rally 1 and a rock soild 60 fps . I doubt it a massive seller but sould seller a millon on the PS4/One/PC and also please the old SEGA fans at the same time .

But it needs to go to the route of time based courses, Made in Japan by SOJ  and not go the way of Revo where the coruse was never the same lap after lap (an amazing feature but that should have been for a seprate racer imo)

[Aki-at]

Would that include maybe developing more mid-tier/"B-Type" games? maybe work with the Western dev teams to create a universal engine?

With games such as Binary Domain and Yakuza, I really think that the Western branches should work with Japan and try to market/bring attention to the Japanese games.  They obviously have potential, they just need the right push (or in BD's case, an actual one)...which is something they can learn from Atlus.

I agree they should make more b-tier games and try to make them successful in the West. Square have announced quite a few with some good success rates among them (Life is Strange, Dragon Quest Heroes etc.) and I don't see why it can't work with Yakuza either. I use to think that it being a numbered series would absolutely hurt the series potential but looking at the Witcher 3 it absolutely doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm not expecting sales like Witcher but having a pathetic 25,000 units per release in the United States makes titles like Persona and Neptune seem like AAA sellers!

But I don't think they need a Western developer to help make an engine, Unreal Engine 4 exists and almost all major Japanese developers (And even Western publishers like Microsoft) are using it. Another major game was announced this morning using it (Dragon Quest 11) so if SEGA wants to get a universal engine running there's no need to develop one, just license it.

[George]

There is still a market for racing games? Didn't the last Codemasters game get released as a early access title to see if there was any want for it? That doesn't sound like a for sure successful market to me.

It's interesting that mostly all of their releases from this year were pushed to Fall/Winter release date even if they announced for Summer.
 
Maybe they have something in plans at least for their Western side of things.

BTW, George or any adm. ,change the name of the CEO in the title for Haruki Satomi. His grumpy pachinko dad didn't do those interviews.

Done

[Team Andromeda]

There is still a market for racing games? Didn't the last Codemasters game get released as a early access title to see if there was any want for it?

And it sold well and got rave reviews even though the game is far  from finished . Looking over that, F1 2015 has stormed the charts and the likes of Mario Kart 7, Forza 5, Project Cars , Drive Club have all sold well ..

Driving games are coming back in vogue

[George]

So releasing a early access game = great prospects for the genre? Sorry, if you think SEGA releasing a racing game first is going to make them a massive success... gonna be a lot of hard broken fans.

DiRT Rally, the early access game is NOT a massive success. For example it has 119,860 owners.... while Valkyria Chronicles has 466,777 owners (steam only) for a port.

AT this point they might as well make a new VC instead of a racing game.