SEGA has announced today that they have acquired French developer Amplitude Studios. Amplitude Studios is responsible for the Endless franchise which span different genres but known for its turn based strategy. Amplitude Studios is working on Endless Space 2 which is set to hit Steam Early Access later this year.
Amplitude Studios wrote this about joining SEGA on their developer blog:
“Of course you could wonder, “Why Sega?” If you were to ask just Mathieu and I, we could easily answer with the words “Creative Assembly and Relic!” because we are HUGE fans of their games. The opportunity to join them is incredible for us, a real dream come true.
But the bigger reason why we wanted to join SEGA was how they treat their internal studios. Often, studios are controlled by a central department that dictates what games they should do, and how and when. But SEGA is a company that offers its support to the creators, positioning itself as a service provider, helping studios to reach their goals with only one objective in mind: Quality!”
SEGA Europe President and COO Jurgen Post had this to say about Amplitude Studios:
“To have the opportunity to add a studio with the growing reputation of Amplitude’s, to the SEGA family, is an exciting one and reinforces SEGA Europe’s position as a market leader in publishing high quality PC games,”
What are your thoughts on the latest acquired studio by SEGA? Do you think they did the right move tapping into the indie market? Let us know in the comments below.
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Clearly they aren’t aware of how Sega treats their Japanese studios.
Also Creative Assembly and Relic are 2nd party, not internal 1st party.
SEGA wholly owns CA and Relic. They are internal developers. Second party, which is a colloquial term, does not apply. Second party developers refer to independent studios who take contracts from platform holders (home console companies) and what they produce is usually exclusive to that platform.
CA and Relic, and now Amplitude, are not on a contract. SEGA paid for them and now their IPs and employees fall under SEGA, thus they are “first party”.