Waiting for SEGA to announce their upcoming games and have them playable at events like E3? Well, you might be in for a shocker, seems that SEGA isn’t listed in registered exhibitors for this year’s E3.
Am I shocked? No, SEGA has already announced that they are restructuring and moving form San Francisco to the LA area this upcoming June. Sadly with the move comes a lot of the staff leaving and most likely people that helped with these events. I can see SEGA just showing off games with other bigger booths, like Yakuza 5 at Sony’s booth for example.
Personally I find that E3 is slowly becoming less relevant to consumers and wouldn’t mind if SEGA just focused on having their own version of Nintendo Direct where we see all the games coming in an hour long type of live stream. One thing with SEGA is that their fans are spread from Sonic the Hedgehog only fans to Total War only fans, these two fan bases have millions of users and having them come together for one stream will allow you to show them franchises they would otherwise never hear of.
What are your thoughts on SEGA not being registered for a E3 2015 booth?
[via: Sonic Stadium]
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I see the E3 as the place journalist around the world try the demo of upcoming games and they give us, the consumers, their impressions, not some place where you hype with videos and announcements. That said Sega only had one title to show: Tembo, and in that regards I wonder how Gamefreak is feeling right now if they can’t show their game at the most important fair in the western market because their publisher is not there.
Sega missing a next gen E3, a sign of an unrecoverable company.
Good luck with mobile shovelware.
I think the convenient excuse of “Well this is because Sega is moving offices at the same time E3 is held” don’t cut it anymore, it’s not that hard to hold public venues and move offices at the same time. Sega is downsizing into a mobile centric company and E3 is pretty pointless when it comes to mobiles because E3 is for the hardcore crowd and mobiles are for the casual crowd and Sega is no longer a hardcore company, even Capcom is more hardcore than Sega is now, Capcom always was mainly hardcore, but Sega was once more so, and Capcom started steering towards the casuals before their fans put them right again, Sega don’t, if they did, we’d have had Phantasy Star Online 2 and Yakuza 5 years ago, instead we get silly mobile content and the odd PC / 3DS port, time to face the reality, they are a mobile centric company now.
Let’s be honest, what has Sega got to showcase? Next to nothing really, aside from a 3 year old localized game that is digital only, and a new Hatsuni Miki port, I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head, Sega doesn’t really have anything for the rest of the year and E3 is where companies showcase what’s to come for the rest of that year, Sega management probably saw that this years E3 was more of a liability than an asset and not worth the money.
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pretty much how I feel Segabits has been reacting to Sega as of late. It’s getting bleaker and bleaker no matter how you spin things. The idea for a Nintendo-Direct-esque stream is a good one; but Sega has given no indication that anything remotely like that is coming our way. Why do you need a stream when you have no games?
Didn’t know missing a expo while moving the same month was a big deal when there are like 3-4 other expos after it they are going to go to. Their next big game is Creative Assembly’s two upcoming games and they always get shown off at Gamescon.
Have to agree sadly.
I understand that George mentioned Creative Assembly games, but what else after that?
I can only hope that Sony has an exclusive from SEGA otherwise.
Well, it’s a good thing Sega bothered to buy Atlus, as if not, what would Sega have?
Though now I fear it was a move of compensation rather than as an addition, in other words, they bought them merely because they knew they were going to phase out their own in-house out put in years to come. Since 2001, Sega has went from decline after decline with the odd big growth every 4 or 5 years or so, but their shrinking decline is still accelerating faster than their growth.
This is a Next Gen E3 as well – not a good sign. Sega certainly hasn’t grown much since the start of the last gen, look at Sega’s attendance in ’05 at the start of the last generation of consoles compared to this generation now, it was far bigger than anything they’ve done the past 5 years, this gen, Sega has hardly done anything yet.
“Let’s be honest, what has Sega got to showcase?”
Well the thing is, Sega has plenty to showcase. The problem is that almost nobody will know about it because Sega will be skipping E3.
Needless to say I think it would be a mistake if Sega were to skip E3. I don’t think that E3 is becoming less relevant, and if anything I think it’s a time when people who maybe don’t read up on the industry as often as we do get to learn about games that are coming up. As far as Nintendo Directs go, while it’s a cool idea that has proven to be successful, I also know that many were pissed at Nintendo for scaling back their E3 involvement by removing their press conference, for example, and a big problem I personally have with Nintendo Directs are that they cater almost exclusively to *Nintendo fans*, who of course, being Nintendo fans, already know all about what is being shown off. People who aren’t Nintendo fans are likely not watching Nintendo Directs, though they do tune in to E3 coverage.
E3’s a time that a lot of people look forward to and follow, and if you want to show off your games to an audience who may not read SEGAbits every day, that’s sort of the place to do it at, I feel.
In that case, what do they have?
I’d be interested to hear what they do have, I have not heard anything else big upcoming from them in mainstream VG news for a some time, other than the new localized Yakuza 5 – a 3 year old title – but fair enough, we didn’t get it localized at the time and now it finally is.
Let’s be honest, Sega is primarily a mobile phone game company now. We need to accept it. They will have the odd PC and Console game, but it’s going to be the exception. Why would they book E3 for that?
Their PC stuff is better off shown at Gamescon (CA games etc) and… I don’t know of anything else they are publishing.
I think the convenient excuse of “Well this is because Sega is moving offices at the same time E3 is held” don’t cut it anymore, it’s not that hard to hold public venues and move offices at the same time. Sega is downsizing into a mobile centric company and E3 is pretty pointless when it comes to mobiles because E3 is for the hardcore crowd and mobiles are for the casual crowd and Sega is no longer a hardcore company, even Capcom is more hardcore than Sega is now, Capcom always was mainly hardcore, but Sega was once more so, and Capcom started steering towards the casuals before their fans put them right again, Sega don’t, if they did, we’d have had Phantasy Star Online 2 and Yakuza 5 years ago, instead we get silly mobile content and the odd PC / 3DS port, time to face the reality, they are a mobile centric company now.