News

SEGA to divide Index Corporation into two companies on April 1st

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Gematsu is reporting that SEGA will be dividing the recently acquired Index Corporation into two companies: Atlus and Index. The division, which will go into effect on April 1st, will also see Index’s Western subsidiary change its name to Atlus U.S.A., Inc. SEGA Sammy’s reasoning for the division is to “maximize the creation of synergies within SEGA Sammy, as well as within each industry of the SEGA Group”.

Atlus will be heading game planning and development with 121 employees, and current SEGA managing director and Index company director Yukio Sugino will be acting as Atlus’ new representative. Meanwhile, Index will handle content and solutions business with 166 employees, the current Index representative director and executive vice president Yasuhiko Hamada will be acting as Index’s representative.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this new division in 2014 and beyond, most intriguing is the mention of creating synergies between Index and Atlus and SEGA’s operations. Could we see Index taking on SEGA IPs, or vice versa?

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SEGA Japan releases a trailer for Shining Force Cross Exlesia Version B

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SEGA of Japan has released a trailer for the version B upgrade to their arcade title Shining Force Cross Exlesia, which is a follow-up to 2012’s arcade title Shining Force Cross Elysion. The trailer shows off the various character classes, including human, darkrace, birdring, beasthalf, and elf. No release date has been given, but fans of the series can expect to see this revision hit Japanese arcades soon.

SEGA has really been shining the light on the Shining Force franchise as of late, with this announcement and the reveal of the Shining Force fighting game. Hey SEGA of Japan, where’s our Virtua Fighter 6?

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Indie shmup NEO XYX releases today for the SEGA Dreamcast

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It has been a busy time for indie SEGA Dreamcast games. Last month we saw the release of Redux: Dark Matters, next month is expected to see the release of Pier Solar, and today we see the release of NG:DEV.TEAM’s NEO XYX. Described as a maniac shooter, the game features 6 stages with 6 endbosses and 5 midbosses, all rendered in 16-bit hand-drawn graphics. The game supports the VMU, VGA out, and the Dreamcast arcade stick. The game also features both vertical (TATE) and horizontal (YOKO) controls, and depending on your screen orientation, the HUD changes to suit the screen mode.

You can purchase the game at the official NG:Dev.Team store, or you can find it for a bit less at Play-Asia in a Standard Edition release, a Limited Edition release which includes the game’s soundtrack, and a Collector’s Edition release.

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New Shining video game is an arcade fighting game, check out the trailer

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Today SEGA announced the latest entry in the Shining franchise, Blade Arcus from Shining, a 2D arcade fighting game. Tony Taka, the man responsible for most of the franchise’s character designs of the last decade, has returned to design the characters for this game. I’m disappointed by this bit of news, as I don’t care for his work in the franchise.

The game will feature characters from Shining Blade, like Sakuya and Rage, as well as least two new characters. Blade Arcus from Shining is set to come out this summer in Japan.

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Nintendo Direct features new Bayonetta 2 trailer

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Today’s Nintendo Direct was light on SEGA, at least for the West, however we did get a new Bayonetta 2 trailer which features some of the returning secondary characters in their new costumes as well as a new character, a young boy with dreadlocks stuck in Purgatorio with Bayonetta. Boss battles and a sweet surfing scene are shown off as well. All in all, an exciting trailer for the game. The release date is still slated as being later this year, and not much else is revealed beyond that. The Japanese Nintendo Direct revealed the same trailer, as well as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and Hero Bank.

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Guilty Gear Xrd Coming to Japanese Arcades February 20th

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Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear Xrd website and a recent Dengeki Online posting confirm that Guilty Gear Xrd will be arriving on Japanese arcades on February 20. An earlier rumor suggested that wide arcade release in Japan would not arrive until March, but that can now be put to rest. Check out the above video to see the arcade opening featuring some gameplay in its cel-shaded, 2D-imitation glory.

Guilty Gear Xrd concluded its last round of location tests this past week. PS3 and PS4 releases are currently planned for the game, though there is not much word on a release schedule for the platforms beyond “2014.” Localization of some form for the games has also not been announced, but most every Guilty Gear release, namely the main entries and version updates, have not missed localization, and Arc System Works’ US Twitter account last year took note of a petition to develop a Wii U version, so the fan demand for some localization seems to be recognized.

Guilty Gear Xrd’s arcade version was developed using SEGA’s RingEdge2 arcade system board, and was regularly location tested at SEGA arcades. SEGA will also have a role in publishing the arcade version. SEGA owned the rights to Guilty Gear for a couple of years once SEGA and Sammy merged since Sammy owned the franchise, though now Arc System Works has claimed complete ownership of the IP.

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Typing of the Dead: Overkill ‘Love at First Bite’ Lexicon Pack released today

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In celebration of Valentine’s Day, SEGA has released new DLC for Typing of the Dead: Overkill in the form of the ‘Love at First Bite’ Lexicon Pack. Priced at $2.99/£1.99/€2.49, the pack replaces the usual content with romantically themed words and phrases. Meanwhile, for those who have had enough of Valentine’s Day, on February 13th SEGA will release the free ‘Make War Not Love’ Lexicon Pack, which replaces all the words and phrases with battle cries and “motivational military speak”. So whether you’re in the mood for love, or want to head to battle, SEGA has you covered.

Want to know what we thought of Typing of the Dead: Overkill? Check out the SEGAbits review!

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Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed to release in Japan on May 15th

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Famitsu reports that SEGA has announced a Japanese release date for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Tranformed. The game, which released in the West on November 2012, is due for release on the Wii U and Playstation 3 on May 15th, 2014. While Famitsu’s article does not mention any exclusive characters for the Japanese version, it would be interesting if SEGA included Ryo Hazuki or Hatsune Miku in an attempt to appeal more to Japanese audiences. One interesting bit of information is the mention of Takenobu Mitsuyoshi being “the voice of SEGA”, could the Japanese version be adding an announcer or theme song to the game? We’ll reach out to Sumo for more info on this and the Japanese release of the game. Stay Tuned!

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SEGA in the Charts: MediaCreate charts for Feb 03 – Feb 09 2014

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It’s not been long since the last “SEGA in the Charts” posts where I reported the sombre news of SEGA’s rhythm dance title Umetaki 575 failing at retail. This week however we see one of SEGA’s big hitters arrive in the Japanese market, the latest entry into the Puyo Puyo series where SEGA mixes and matches it’s traditional puzzle series with the 80s classic Tetris. Launching on several SKUs (Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Sony Playstation 3 and Vita) promises to be one of SEGA’s strong sellers this year, hit after the break to find out how well the title did.

Continue Reading ➜

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Yakuza Restoration demo hits Japanese PSN on February 13th

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Playstation 3 users might want to mark February 13th on their calendars as the day you get to try Yakuza Restoration for the first time. The game’s demo will be downloadable and will include mini-games like fishing and going to a singing bar.

The demo will weigh in at 2,410 MB. The game will come out on February 22nd on both Playstation 3 and Playstation 4. No Western release plans have been announced.

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Transformers Mega Drive Megatron is pretty much the coolest toy ever

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Via Tformers comes the reveal of a very cool new Transformers figure: The Mega Drive Megatron. A collaboration between SEGA and Takara Tomy, the figure is, as you would expect from the name, the Decepticon leader Megatron who transforms into a SEGA Mega Drive. This special edition figure was revealed at the Tokyo Toy Show Winter Wonder Festival, and from the photos it is assumed that the figure will act as a USB device based on the end of Megatron’s arm mounted weapon. Once we learn more of this awesome figure, including where you can buy it, we’ll be sure to let you know!

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SEGA Reports 44.3 Billion Yen Growth for 2013, Digital Market Thrives

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SEGA Sammy has released their earnings report for 2013, yielding a net profit of ¥44.3 billion, or $434 million, and a 564% increase year over year. The company attributed it to strong Pachinko performance and the sales of investment securities and non-current assets.

On the home electronics side, SEGA’s top three performing titles were Football Manager 14 at 680,000 units, Sonic Lost World for a combined 640,000 units, and the Japan-Only SAKATSUKU Pro Succer Club wo Tsukurou! for 200,000. Despite this, the nine-month period ending on Dec. 31, 2013 in which SEGA tracked numbers returned only 6.5 million total units of games moved, a decrease it attributes to “the harsh market environment.”

It’s not all doom and gloom because the company also found what they call “continued favorable” success on the digital side with Phantasy Star Online 2 and mobile phone titles Puyopuyo!! Quest and CHAIN CHRONICLE as the top runners there. The whole division saw a 19.7% increase year-to-year in net sales to a total of ¥72,934 million.

Keep in mind, back in November, SEGA purchased Atlus-parent company Index for a seemingly paltry ¥14 billion.

The release of the financial data comes hours after SEGA unveiled its plans for a massive spin-off of Sonic The Hedgehog with Sonic Boom.

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SEGAbits & Segalization partnership

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Hi SEGAbits readers! Some of you may have heard about Segalization, our new fan campaign that focuses on promoting the localization of Japanese Sega games. The project has already gone live a while ago, and today we’d like to formally announce a new partnership with our friends at SEGAbits. Other than having both websites link to each other, this partnership means you may find Segalization staffers occasionally contributing articles to SEGABits, which may or may not involve titles or news related to Segalization’s mission. In this first article, we’d like to talk a bit about the origins and goals of our campaign/website.

Continue Reading ➜

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We are celebrating our 4th anniversary!

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Holy Sonic balls, we are now 4 years old. I know that if you have been scrolling through the site lately you probably have noticed that there has been quite a lack of ‘George’ written posts and I’m here to inform you that I have not abandoned the site. If anything, I missed it. It’s just something I have been doing since I first got internet on my Dreamcast back in 1999! It started off with chats on IRC rooms, moved over to forums and eventually ended up blogging! This lead me to wanting to own my own SEGA site, thus here we are at SEGAbits.

Thankfully I have had great people on board here to help me come up with ideas, this site might have been started by me, but decisions are group based. I want to thank the awesome staff we have here, who work very hard on the site and usually have some of the most brilliant ideas. One of the big reasons the site looks so well is because of our web designer Will, who is working on a new look for the site and has been with the site since before it was even launched! I want to thank A.J. for single handily making our YouTube channel relevant, thanks to Nuckles and Shigs for going to events for us and running the Sonic Talk podcast, thanks to Ben for all that work he does behind the scenes with his editing skills and I also want to thank Barry The Nomad who came in and created some great images for the site, while also helping me make the Swingin’ Report Show podcast awesome. One of the biggest help we had on the site last year was our partnership with Sonic Retro/SEGA Retro, so I definitely want to thank those guys. Its been a great partnership!

But mostly I want to thank everyone that reads the site! You guys make our little fun hobby way more enjoyable. What’s 4 more years?

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