Publisher Microids has announced a new distribution agreement with Forever Entertainment to physically publish Panzer Dragoon and The House of the Dead remakes. Microids’ biggest release would be Oddworld Soulstorm.
This comes off Forever Entertainment inking a deal to make games for Square-Enix and a distribution deal with Nintendo Japan.
This is great for Forever Entertainment, but yet again I have to question SEGA’s decision not to publish their own IPs, even if Forever Entertainment is developing them. Its so bizarre.
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Lucky if Sega acknowledge their own IPs these days outside of Sonic, Yakuza and Judgement, never mind publishing their own IP with their own support and placing their own name on the product. Very strange how Sega is doing this, and even Sonic Mania wasn’t entirely done in-house at Sega, though in fairness it has had the most Sega involvement (as well as fully Sega published) so far compared to;
*Shenmue III
*Streets of Rage 4
*Wonder Boy The Dragon’s Trap (2017 remake of Master System classic (SMS very also built in)).
*Monster Boy and the Cursed Dragon (excellent 5 star, though Sega is named on the title screen).
*Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (2021 remake).
*Panzer Dragoon (2020 remake).
*Panzer Dragoon II (2021 remake)
*The House of the Dead remake.
All of which have had reasonably limited Sega involvement and none of which were even published by Sega, which could make their potential future use more difficult, like with what happened to Bayonetta.
There’s also Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter, Altered Beast etc to come yet which Sega has noted in its manifesto from March this year of re-releasing classics but it seems Sega is just content to keep them at arms length from itself and simply capitalise off the royalty proceeds they receive with less concern if the games are even done correctly or not.
I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising why they were so willing to suddenly do that ‘Road to 2020’ campaign a few years ago, as they didn’t do anything with these franchises for years but keep seeing the demand for them but wasn’t willing to take the risk on them, but came up with the idea of just licensing them out to non-Sega studios.
Beyond those immediate plans, Sega also wants to create some “super game” over the next five years. It’s not clear whether this is simply an aspirational quote about a potentially massive game, or just a reference to Creative Assembly’s shooter but it seems the goal with this one is to make a global brand.
Profitably is expected to be low at the start of course, as it’s going to be a new IP, but Sega’s hoping and expecting it will ramp up over time and become a new staple supposedly, whatever it ends up becoming.
This is great news. If Microids is publishing it, it means it’s not Nintendo, which means those games won’t have to be exclusive to the Switch.