Sonic Lost World demo arrives in the U.S. eShop

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Never say never, Sonic Lost World demo for both Wii U and 3DS hits the store today. What does this mean?  Well, it means that if you live in the United States you can try out Sonic Lost World for both Wii U and 3DS. The Japanese gamers have had the demos since early last month, lucky them!

Expect a SEGAbits review for Sonic Lost World to be posted soon.

Haruka cleans your home in Yakuza Restoration

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Haruka has been in the Yakuza franchise since the first title came out on the Playstation 2 back in 2005 and is a main character of the franchise. In this title, the character Ryoma Sakamoto (played by Kiryu Kazuma) meets Haruka (yes, they are keeping her name) after saving her from a incident (that isn’t revealed). After that, she decides to let him live with her. Yeah, even she’s confused in the picture above.

Check the gallery after the jump for more photos of her sweeping dirt, caressing Ryoma’s head and other creepy shots.

Football Manager 2013 has been ‘pirated over 10.1 million times’

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Miles Jacobson, studio head over at Sports Interactive has stated that Football Manager 2013 has been illegally downloaded well over 10.1 million times, during his talk at the London Games Conference.

How did they get this number? According to Jacobson the crack had a ‘Home’ flaw which allowed the developers to trace and track IP addresses of the pirates. So which country had the most pirated copies of the game? Not surprising it was China with 3.2 million downloads followed by Turkey with 1.05 million.

Out of the 547,000 people that downloaded the game in Italy was from Vatican City, I’m assuming downloading pirated software is not shunned by God.  Of course just because they pirated the game doesn’t mean they lost a sale, which Sports Interactive seems to agree. They do say they lost 176,000 sales (their figure) due to pirates. That would mean that 1.74% of pirates would have purchased the game, but didn’t due to them getting it for free. How much did SEGA lose? $3.7 million in revenue. They say that this lead to the team creating harder to crack DRM for Football Manager 2014.

Sony’s Third Production Team receiving many requests for Yakuza, Shenmue

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A few months ago, Sony announced the formation of the Third Party Productions team, a new group within Sony’s third party relations meant to facilitate the localization or porting of content between regions or consoles. The first project announced by this team was the Vita port of Borderlands 2, which is a pretty major feat to accomplish in and of itself.

The team has since asked fans to send in requests for the kinds of games they’d like to see on their Playstation console of choice, and according to Sony’s Adam Boyes their top two choices were none other then SEGA’s Yakuza and Shenmue franchises. For what this means, please check out the full quote below the fold. For the full interview, please visit Kotaku.

Check out SEGA’s Plants vs. Zombies The Last Stand arcade cabinet

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SEGA Amusements is teasing new items that will be at their IAAPA 13 show in a few days. One of their machines that they are going to promote is this Plants vs. Zombies The Last Stand arcade machine. This is the first time we have seen the cabinet and its pretty flashy.

First thing you will notice is that this isn’t a port of the mobile game for arcades, it looks like a light gun version of the game. So is this basically House of the Dead: Plants vs. Zombies? Who knows. But it would be awesome to have some House of the Dead cross overs in here. What are your thoughts?

New DLC for Racing Transformed discovered on Steam

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Mystery DLC has been discovered on Steam for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. It has a date of November 5th. I remember a while back Steve Lycett saying there would be one more character coming this year who was rated highly on the poll. This could mean anything though. Do you think it’s Miku? Do you think its Ryo Hazuki? Do you think it’s Kazuma Kiryu? Let us know in the comments!

It might also be important to note that the past few character updates have been included as patches, yet whatever this upcoming content is seems like it’s going to be paid DLC.

View the full article to see a picture of the STEAM data.

Hatsune Miku Project Diva f PS Vita English version releasing Early 2014

Hungry for more Vita games? SEGA has heard your cries. Announcing Hatsune Miku f for PS Vita, the original Hatsune Miku Project Diva f game that was released in Japan. We never got the PS Vita version in the west, but it looks like we will be getting it now. Lots of people say the Vita version is better than the PS3 version due to no input lag on the screen and tapping the screen for the stars instead of flicking the control sticks. Not to mention that great looking OLED screen.

I guess this means the PS3 version must of sold well in the west for them to want to bring this over.. now, about PSO2…

A TSA officer told Peter Moore: “I don’t need to see your passport. You’re the asshole that gave away Shenmue to Xbox”

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This is a funny post today on ‘Today I learned’ subreddit, the section is for people to post facts that they just learned today. This one being SEGA related, I thought it would be fun to share. The source is this wikipedia entry.

‘Moore disclosed to GamingSteve.com that at a security checkpoint at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, a TSA security agent said “I don’t need to see your passport. You’re the asshole that gave away Shenmue to Xbox.”‘

If there is anything I agree with here is that Shenmue does have one of the most vocal fanbases ever. Do I think it was bad to move Shenmue 2 to Xbox? Not necessarily, I thought it was bad not releasing the Dreamcast version along with the Xbox version.

Atlus games go on sale on PSN and Steam

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So you found out about SEGA acquiring Atlus and want to try a few of their games to see what they are all about? Don’t worry, they are having a sale on some of their games over on PSN and Steam.

PSN:

Steam: 

The sale ends tomorrow on PSN and on the 5th on Steam. So go and get what you want before that. I recommend Persona 4 Golden!

SEGA-Sammy’s Finicial Report: Consumer division beats expectations, generates profit

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It seems that SEGA-Sammy is on track. In recent earnings they continued to generate profit as a whole thanks to their amusement and pachinko slot machines, usually their consumer business loses money. Not this time, SEGA’s consumer business reported a income of 1.12 billion yen (about $11.35 million). What lead to SEGA’s sudden turn in profits?

  • During the three month period, their biggest title was Total War: Rome II, which moved 800,000 units.  Considering the fact that this report ends on September 30th, that would mean the game was on sale for less than a month!
  • According to the report their digital titles for Windows PC, mobile phones and smartphones ‘remained favorable’. Phantasy Star Online 2 saw 3 million registered accounts during August and 800,000 people downloaded the mobile game ‘Chain Chronicle‘ .

SEGA-Sammy as a company saw their operating income jump up 57.1 %, ranking in 12.4 billion yen. If you are one of the people that invested in SEGA-Sammy stock, congratulations!

Sakura Wars Mobage will feature a costume changing system and sign ups

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A few months ago, SEGA and Red Entertainment made a partnership with Mobage to develop a new Sakura Wars game which displeased many fans in Japan.  However, Sakura Wars for Mobage  will feature a original story featuring several characters from the franchise a new gameplay system that involves changing costumes.

Details about how this  will change gameplay have not been announced as of yet. Signups for Sakura Wars for  Mobage start today and if you register early you’ll get an ultra rare  Sakura Shinguji card. Service for the game is scheduled to begin sometime this winter.

Special Thanks to SEGAFAN for the tip!

Sonic Dash receives a Halloween update, battle Zazz of Sonic Lost World for a limited time

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Hardlight Studio announced a surprise update to Sonic Dash this morning, adding to the game for a limited time a boss battle with Zazz of Sonic Lost World. The addition is big news for a few reasons, one being that the game now has boss battles which have been long requested by fans, the other reason being that Sonic Lost World is not even a month old and we’ve already seen the first instance of a new character from the game appearing in another Sonic title. Zazz’s boss battle appears to occur at random when hitting a spring to enter a new area. Players must first dodge stars from behind, then from ahead. Finally, Sonic and Zazz fly into the air and you must homing attack the Zeti to defeat him.

Hardlight Studio also promises a Sonic Lost World global challenge, once we learn more of what the challenge entails we’ll be sure to update this story. After the break, check out a few screens of Zazz in Sonic Dash .

SEGA 3D Classics for Nintendo 3DS priced and dated


 
Fans of classic SEGA games, it’s happening! Today the SEGA Blog has revealed the prices and dates for the 3D versions of several SEGA classics headed to the Nintendo 3DS. Each game will be priced at $5.99/€4.99/£4.49 and the release schedule is as follows:

3D Space Harrier, 3D Super Hang-On – 11/28/2013
3D Sonic The Hedgehog, 3D Altered Beast – 12/5/2013
3D Ecco the Dolphin™, 3D Galaxy Force II – 12/12/2013
3D Shinobi III, 3D Streets of Rage – 12/19/2013

Nice to see SEGA staggering the releases so fans can digest each game. Especially excited to see 3D Space Harrier and 3D Super Hang-On releasing on my birthday. Which games are you downloading on day one?