CNBC interviews Sega Sammy Holdings President Haruki Satomi

Recently CNBC’s Christine Tan sat down with Sega Sammy Holdings President Haruki Satomi to discuss video games, including the flagship series Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as the pachinko business and more. The interview was held as part of the CNBC show Managing Asia and is available in full as a transcript and offers a revealing look at Satomi’s thoughts on the company and his family’s legacy. Most amusingly, Satomi reveals that his favorite games are the Yakuza and Valkyria Chronicles series. Guess we know why they make so many of them now!

Give the interview a read and once the full video is posted online we will be sure to share it!

SEGA Games CEO talks to CNBC about demand for retro SEGA consoles

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CNBC had a interview with SEGA Games young CEO Haruki Satomi where he discussed what SEGA was up to in modern times and talked about fan demand for SEGA retro consoles. According to Satomi, he specifically gets a lot of demand for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive. We know the company just announced SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive Classics for PS4, Xbox One and PC. When pressed by the interviewer if SEGA had plans for a retro console, he said:

“Depending on fans request… if we hear more request and its a reasonable business for us then it might happen in the future.”Haruki Satomi, CEO of SEGA Games

A really cool part of the interview is Haruki Satomi discussing what ‘Nintendo has done right with AR, like Pokemon Go’ (which is weird because Pokemon Go isn’t created by Nintendo), then Satomi goes into talking about SEGA doing VR first back in the mid-90s. While its cool to see CNBC do a interview with Haruki Satomi, I would have loved if they had someone that knows more about SEGA interview him. You know, like us?

SEGA ranked 3rd best publisher of 2017 by Metacritic

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The people over at Metacritic has ranked the best publishers of 2017, determined by the quality of titles released during the 2017 calendar year. SEGA came in 3rd only being beaten by Bethesda Software and Nintendo. According to Metacritic, SEGA’s average score for the year was 75.5%! The worse rated game was Valkyria Revolution with a 55% score and the best was Bayonetta on PC with a 90%. SEGA bested big publishers like Activision Blizzard, Capcom, Ubisoft, Sony, and Square-Enix.

This is more proof that SEGA has been heading down the right direction since they had their huge restructure back in 2015 and got their new CEO Haruki Satomi who promised to earn gamer’s trust again by releasing more high quality software. What are your thoughts on SEGA’s output in 2017? Let us know in the comments below!

SEGA posts sales profits despite having fewer sales

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SEGA-Sammy has posted their detailed financial report for the last six months, spanning from April to September 2015. If you guys didn’t know, April 1st is when SEGA’s massive restructure happen and around June is when SEGA of America did their big move. Not only that but the company hasn’t been releasing as much software as they used to, but they still manage to make profit even with a decrease in sales.

SEGA-Sammy reports 1.2 billion in net sales, which happens to be a decrease of 2.5% over the same six month period in 2014, where they reported over 1.3 billion. Yet SEGA-Sammy posted a profit of $7.9 million, compared to losing $23 million in 2014.

SEGA-Sammy said that digital games just happen to be one of the big money makers for the company which happen to them get out of the red. What games did good? Lets look.

Round Table: Our thoughts on SEGA Games’ new CEO Haruki Satomi

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It has been a rough path being a SEGA fan, while I do feel like they have made some great games in the past decade, its easy to see that they have also made their fair share of mistakes. A few weeks ago the newly elected Sega Games Co. CEO and Vice President, Haruki Satomi had a interview with Famitsu where he discussed how he felt some games SEGA released in the last decade abused fan’s trust towards the brand and how they are learning from Atlus in the West.

Of course the internet was an uproar, some even stating that SEGA hasn’t released a good game in a decade. Regardless of how you feel about SEGA, its always good for a company to take feedback and be straight when talking about the company. So this week’s round table we discuss what we thought of Mr. Satomi’s interview.

SEGA Games CEO talks about fan reactions to his Famitsu interview

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If you missed it, Haruki Satomi the newly elected CEO of SEGA Games Co. (he was hired on April 1st) did a Famitsu interview where he talked about how SEGA has released software in the last 10 years that he felt betrayed fan’s trust in the brand. Says he believes quality Japanese games can sell in the West and among other comments that lots of SEGA fans across the globe agreed with.

Haruki Satomi obviously has been getting e-mailed by media about those comments and he sent the following message to Siliconera.

“Seeing our fans across the world respond to our recent interview with Famitsu, lets us know we’ve made the right first step in acknowledging who we are and where we want to be. Sega is dedicated to bringing you quality gaming experiences and becoming a brand you love and trust again,”

During the Famitsu interview, he said that they had a game to announce at Tokyo Game Show later in September, this will be one of the first glimpse at where Satomi wants to take SEGA in the future. So what do you think about his comments? Let us know what you think about his comments by leaving a comment in the comment box below (yo dawg).

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SEGA Japan CEO talks about earning gamer’s trust, learning from Atlus and focusing on quality titles

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[Update: It seems that their might have been some mistranslation when it came to Siliconera’s reporting on the story. While it said it was Hajime Satomi who was interviewed, according to Gematsu it was actually his son and newly crowned president of Sega Games co that was interviewed. It makes sense since he barely got the job in April during the restructure.]

Its easy to see that there have been issues at SEGA that they have been trying to get patched up. One thing is for sure is that SEGA Japan’s in-house gaming studios haven’t delivered titles that have been up to par and it always seems that they are trying to go triple A development and falling short with unpolished titles being released. It seems that long time SEGA CEO and President Hajime Satomi understands fan’s frustrations, he talked to Famitsu about how SEGA Japan has actually been learning from Atlus’ model of game creation:

“As far as the Western market goes, we learned a lot from Atlus. If we can make a title with proper quality, I believe there’s a good chance for it to do well even in the West for players that like to play Japanese games.”

It also seems that Satomi is really eyeing the Playstation 4 as a future console they want to release titles on, while the company has been only focusing on the Nintendo Wii U in the West in the last few years (it seems that might change):

“It may look rough if you look a it from a Japanese standpoint, but on a global scale the PlayStation 4 has a record-selling history, so I believe there’s a good opportunity there,”

While we know SEGA will have a big focus on mobile games, considering that a huge percentage of Japanese gamers are using the platform as its main gaming machine, Famitsu asked him what they are looking to focus more on when it comes to console games. Answer? Quality.