Yeah and its pretty successfull to boot.
Also Kataoka wasn't behind the Lindbergh, that was Hiroshi Yagi, also someone Sato's hardware engineering team since the late seventies. Kataoka however introduced internet functions to arcades and was behind the direction of VF4 and VF5.
In Japan there might be (they have festivals of their mobile division with plenty visitors). Western expansion on mobile will not work out for Sega I think.
The Western Mobile gaming business has extreme untapped potential. There's virtually little to no mainstream game publishing competition in it. SEGA believes if it focuses resources on creating outsourcing development divisions of Sega Networks,Inc across America, it can dominate the market and thus have a much larger marketshare than potential upcoming competitors.
Mobile gaming in the US is mainly and entirely casual, but there's humongous,rich and ripe potential for a cottage industry.
I personally see SEGA easily dominating the mobile market without must trouble or fuss. Sonic Dash continues to be a tremendous success worldwide. And despise being F2P, Sonic Runners is a profitable service IP with around a modest 3-4 million regular users.
Regarding Lindbergh, I see. Also, I forgot that Wonderland Wars was announced at this year's AOU back in February. I wasn't sure it would get released this year at all.
@TA. I don't think you understand. Game budgets are not $30 million at all. The average budget is $50-58 million. The development costs and budgets of console games started spiking during the 7th Gen due to more open world games being developed and larger more development resources and tools.
Also, you don't seem to understand ROE and how a console title has to break even or profit.
In order to break even, a title with an average of $50-80 million needs to sell at least 2 million SKUs in a Quarterly period. Not a fiscal. Investors expect immediate returns and back off when they don't. Most Sega titles fail to even sell 1 million. And even when they do, it's considered lackluster and underperforming. Bayonetta is a perfect example.
You know why Sonic Generations was considered unimpressive? SEGA expected 4 Million, not 2 million within a 12 month period. It needed to sell at least 2 million by March 31,2012 and it did not.
The higher the budget, the more SKUs have to be sold to profit.
Regarding SEGA competing with Capcom and EA, you seem to ignore their past. Like its not relevant to you. Like SEGA's core business never existed in the first place. Like they've always been a software publisher and have always been successful doing so. So what happened during 1983-2001?
EA & Capcom have been publishers from the very start. Sega is an Arcade company and thus makes and profits far more in that business.