Forever Entertainment who has recently released the first Panzer Dragoon Remake (working on the sequel) and are currently working on The House of the Dead Remake, has announced that they have signed a publishing deal with Nintendo.
“The board of Forever Entertainment S.A. (FE) is informing of having signed a material agreement between FE and Nintendo Co. Ltd (Nintendo) of Japan.
On the basis of the agreement FE will receive a significant financial backing from Nintendo to fulfil a publishing agreement, the purpose of which is to release several titles from FE release schedule on Nintendo Switch.
The exact release date of each individual titles will be announced in separate reports.”
We really don’t know what the deal is or if it will effect upcoming releases like The House of the Dead Remake, which as of today is only announced for Nintendo Switch. I think the saddest part is that SEGA didn’t sign a publishing deal with a developer that is literally reviving their older franchises. What’s up with that? Could they be reviving Nintendo franchises in the future? This isn’t new as the developer has also signed a contract with Square-Enix to revive titles.
[Via: ResetEra]
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I am glad we are getting remakes and new entries from outside teams in long dormant franchises like Streets of Rage, Alex Kidd and Panzer Dragoon, though it’s a real bummer that SEGA isn’t publishing any of them.
Absolute disgrace, Sega just giving their own IP away to other completely foreign other 3rd parties onlynfor them to sign exclusivity publishing deals with current platform holders like Nintendo. Sorry but these Sega IPs made and published by others are not true Sega works, and you can see that right on the look of Alex Kidds face.
Other than Streets of Rage 4 (probably because that at least did have some Sega involvement), the rest have divulged further away from its source.
There’s no excuse for Sega doing this, if Capcom can still make a new official Ghouls and Ghosts and they’ve just brought out a brand new official Arcade series, then Sega can too, why’s the entire Sega Ages series all limited to a Switch, not good enough and still contradicts Sega’s repeated claims to be less big on platform exclusives.
Same thought, one thing to Sega suspend its own home hardware series but now it isn’t even handling its own software?
That’s the thing, they still technically are a hardware company as well it’s hame hardware they stopped at the time but it’s hard to believe the ambition they had back even in just 2001 after Sega suspended that portion of its business for the time to focus on software specifically for the hame market, where they rekoned they’d hold at least 25% of the entire industry if they suspended Dreamcast development, and they had more more clout as a hame hardware engineering company than they’ve ever had since overall.
Can anybody even verify what Sega’s current command of marketshare even is today when taking in the entire industry? Sure it’s doing better with Yakuza then ever before and now Judgement is it’s latest IP that it’s beginning to build on like they did with Yakuza since 2005 and they came 1st in the metacritics earlier this year, but what is the actual market share?
I think that sega could do a 3D Alex Kidd, it would be easier than a sonic, because you dont have to focus on speed, and can do large stages
What can Alex Kidd offer to stop it being a generic 3D platformer though? I mean Alex Kidd, unlike Sonic, has never really had his own style that was unique to him, his own Sega Master System series was basically a pick and mix, what they tried to do was make Alex Kidd himself an icon rather than the games he was in, so then it comes down to what he has that sets him apart, aside from being able to punch with enlarged hands and probably build a more deeper game around the jankenpon concept or something (which was more of a gimmick in the original), they’d have to probably have to really expand on these features to make it unique Alex Kidd, as this character was a product of his time before Sonic and since then hardly anything has been done to evolve the franchise over the years.
What they did with Sonic was turn him from a character that could interact with objects (which was the original plan) and make himself more of a weapon in interacting with the platform level design.
I’d love to see Alex Kidd back and all those Sega Master System references be implemented in some way but thinking of it from Sega’s perspective, I’m looking at it realistically, so far I think Sega’s view is still just more focussed on the nostalgic aspect, I mean they aren’t even doing anything with it, just leaving it to some other company to redesign and repackage, hardly the height of ambition.
For Sega to do it, I think they’d have to take it more seriously first.
Interesting take, Sega doing something with it is unlikely in the foreseeable future outside of cameo appearances, they’ve just given away a remake opportunity to non-Sega devs, which doesn’t do anything for the Miracle world classic rather than cosmetic changes and minor tweaks to make things a bit easier, still good, but you’d expect a bit more after 35 years since it’s original release with little else done since with Alex Kidd.
Lol Sega fast becoming its own traitor, I can see this becoming like another Bayonetta, where Nintendo puts money down and takes yet another Sega franchise away, like they did with Bayonetta, because Nintendo is putting serious money into funding Forever Entertainment and making sure it owns the assets developed from it, so Panzer Dragoon could become a Nintendo IP in future.
Truly sad how little Sega respects its own, it’s done nothing with Panzer Dragoon for years, gives it away to a completely different company and Nintendo buys it up, while Sega celebrated MAR10
(the annual March 10th Mario celebration- combining ‘Mar’ with ’10’ to spell Mario for March 10th every year) on their twitter account to acknowledge Mario’s birthday (Nintendo’s company mascot) and said absolutely nothing about Panzer Dragoon on the 25th anniversary last year at the same time.
Shameful.
This doesn’t mean Nintendo now owns Panzer Dragoon, does it?
Maybe not the name but the assets and everything else behind the name probably, like when Microsoft bought Bizarre Creations from Sega in 2001, and developed the Project Gotham Racing (PGR) series, it was basically what Sega’s Metropolis Street Racer (MSR) was for the Dreamcast.
So Sega obviously wasn’t going to build on MSR after the Dreamcast (now there’s a surprise), and Microsoft wanted a flagship racer for their new Xbox platform at the time, and it just so happened Sega probably had the most advanced high end racer then (the only other contenders were Sony with it’s Gran Turismo series and Namco with its ridge racer – but ridge racer was more of an arcade racer than a simulation racer so had more in common with Sega’s own pedigree arcade racers like Daytona and Sega Rally etc.
But what it ultimately meant was what could have been a Metropolis Street Racer 2 and 3, ended up becoming Project Gotham Racer, 2, 3 and 4 etc, then eventually Bizarre Creation was sold in 2007 to Activision who then dissolved the studio by 2010 as they couldn’t find a buyer and the UK Liverpool based studio has been defunct ever since, PGR4 was the last in the series, and like Sega with MSR, Microsoft owns the PGR name and licence. I think Bizarre Creations ended up making the racing game called Blur, I think that was their last game.
Actually come to think of it, I don’t think Sega ever owned Bizarre Creations that’s why it was able to work with Microsoft on PGR, before they worked in-house with Sega on MSR, it’s best known success was Formula 1 on the PlayStation (which sold over 1 million) by 1997, before that it used to be called Raising Hell Software, and it made a couple of Mega Drive games like Ths Killing Game Show (also for the Amiga) and Wiz n’ Liz (Mega Drive as well as Amiga too), though Sega did not like the name of Raising Hell Software, so between 1994 to 1997 they went nameless for a while and it was not until Formula 1 on the PlayStation in 1997 that their new name was Bizarre Creations, then Sega contacted them again and re-hired them to work with it on Metropolis Street Racer for the Dreamcast.
I remember seeing an interview in the official Dreamcast Magazine once at the time I think where they said they were directly approached by Sega Europe President – Jean-François Cecillon, who jokenly told them they did great damage to Sega by bringing Formula 1 to PlayStation, and that was basically when they signed a contract to start on Metropolis Street Racer.
I thought MSR was Sega’s?
It is, SEGA specifically laid the concept down and funded it from inception. Bizarre Creations was hired to work on that Sega IP, just like Sumo Digital did with Outrun 2 and Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast.