SEGA-Sammy

SEGA’s Marza studio demos Unreal Engine 4 animations

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SEGA-Sammy owned CGI animation studio Marza Animation Planet has been plenty busy since they debuted in early 2006 by doing opening animations on various SEGA games (including Night of the Werehog animated short), working on the CGI movie ‘Space Pirate Captain Harlock‘ and even being confirmed as doing the CGI for Sony Pictures ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ theatrical film. Seems that the company is always looking ahead and are now getting their feet wet by trying animations in Unreal Engine 4, showing off detailed animations running on the primarily used game engine.

These are ‘real-time demos’ shown off to Japanese gaming website 4Gamer. Marza talks about how making animations in a game engine is new to them and how impress they are with what is possible. This could help SEGA’s development team create faster assets and cut development time in games. The demos they showed off included Happy Forest (above), Ultimate Bowl and Kuro 1.2 in-engine effects . To see the other tech demos hit the jump.

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Sammy announces Bayonetta themed pachislot machine

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Pachislot Bayonetta

Sammy aka parent company of SEGA, has launched a teaser site for their upcoming gambling pachislot machines based on the ever popular Bayonetta IP. It seems that pachislot machines get a negative reaction but most people don’t understand that most of these products have nothing to do with SEGA Games division. This is nothing new, considering that Sammy has been using SEGA (and other) IPs to sell Pachislots for over a decade. It has been a very profitable business for ‘SEGA-Sammy Holdings‘.

Before everyone complains in the comment section about how “SEGA should have just funded Bayonetta 2 instead of this”, please understand that this is like saying “Sony should fund a new Tomba! video game on Playstation 4 instead of making The Interview”, both projects are competently different and the cost of doing a Bayonetta themed pachislot machine is way lower than creating a HD game from scratch.

I hope this means that SEGA and Sammy both find value in owning the Bayonetta IP and haven’t abandoned it. Would be nice to see SEGA do a extended version of Bayonetta 2 on other platforms outside of the dying Wii U.

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

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SatomiLove

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.

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SEGA-Sammy casino gaming video takes bragging to a new level

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Ever wonder what type of videos a investor gets from big Japanese companies? Me too and it will most likely be exactly like the video above. Oddly enough its even translated and fully voiced in English. The video isn’t humble at all talking about the greatness of SEGA-Sammy from owning ‘top leading’ animation studios like Marza and TMS Entertainment to SEGA’s ability to ‘drive Japan’s gaming scene forward with their superior game development capabilities‘.

This video is mostly to promote a new business within’ SEGA-Sammy called ‘SEGA-Sammy Creation’ which will be making casino machines. The president and CEO of the company oddly enough is Hisao Oguchi who has been at SEGA for over 30 years who is known for leading the highly successful SEGA-AM3 arcade team that created Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis series.

The video makes me question if the company understands that their IPs aren’t as strong as they used to be, since the video seems overly positive. But at least the company is recognizing console games as a division within the company.

I’ll just leave this here: 

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SEGA is not leaving the console market

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segaconsoles
I just want to take this time to tell you guys the truth, not the half truths and not some clickbait articles that mainstream media have been passing around. I usually ignore this talk of ‘SEGA is dead’ or ‘SEGA is going out of business’ because this has been talked about in the mainstream media since the late-90’s and I just assumed  we were over these types of things. We are on the internet, I assumed someone would have pointed out fabrications if there where any and it seems not many have.

So is SEGA going to stop supporting consoles with games? The answer is: No. Here is what the statement from SEGA-Sammy said:

Local organizations managing packaged game software in Western markets will be streamlined. In the U.S. Sega of America Inc. based in San Francisco will be relocated to Southern California by this summer and its existing office in San Francisco will be closed, thereafter, which results in reducing fixed expenses, mainly in corporate functions. 

SEGA has stated that they want to focus more on digital games and PC due to the area having a bigger profit margin and considering there are over a 125 million active users on Steam and a billion plus market on phones, do you really blame them? Focusing on digital titles doesn’t mean that they aren’t making console ‘packaged software’. Nowhere in their press release did it say they were going to stop making console titles. If anything, they literally announced that they were bringing Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax to the West two days prior to this restructure announcement and a bit before that they announced Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX for 3DS.

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SEGA-Sammy’s Q1 2015 financial report detailed and explained

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SEGA-Sammy recently announced it’s first half results for the fiscal year and it came with mixed results. Some divisions have beaten expectations so far but the gloomy outlook for the rest of the year has effected the final net income expected by the group. During this period SEGA only released one major title but another up and coming title looks set to outdo their expectations, hit the link to find out what SEGA Sammy have been doing well and what the future holds for the group.

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

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phantasy-star-online-2

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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SEGA-Sammy is trying to buy Atlus’ parent company

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PS4
If you guys didn’t know, Atlus’ parent company, Index Corporation is in a finical mess. The company is in over $2.4 billion yen in debt and is also being investigated for fraud. The company recently talked about selling assets, but now it seems that they might just be bought out whole.

Bloomberg reports that 20 companies are in the race to buy Index, one of those companies is SEGA-Sammy Holdings who is leading the pack. It seems that bids have exceeded the $150 million everyone thought Index was worth, the current bid is at $200 million! It is said that bidding will be narrowed down by next week and if all goes well we will find out what company gets Index and their assets.

But lets say that SEGA does buy Atlus, would that be a great thing for gamers? I mean, I love SEGA and I love Atlus games, but Atlus always brought obscure games over from Japan for Wesetern audiences. Without them we wouldn’t have Demon Souls or even the recent Dragon Crown, while SEGA seems more hesitant to bring over titles (Yakuza 5, Valkyria Chronicles 3 and more). What are your thoughts?

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SEGA-Sammy’s net income up 400% from last year

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segaSAMMY
Its crazy knowing that filtering your content can do so much good for your company, especially SEGA’s recent financial results for the first quarter of its 2014 fiscal year. SEGA-Sammy’s operating income for the quarter ended on June 30th and totaled 16.1 billion yen ($163.85 million), 197.7 percent higher than the same time last year. Net income came in at a (for SEGA-Sammy) staggering 12.9 billion yen ($131.6 million), which is a 408.8 percent increase year-over-year.

SEGA-Sammy totally improved their consumer business segment, which includes those video games you loved published by SEGA and its Japanese pachislot/pachinko machine division. Panchislot/pachinko branch of the company saw a increase of revenue of 138.5%, totaling 18.7 billion yen ($190.2 million).

According to SEGA-Sammy’s press release, their latest RTS game (which they got by buying the team/their franchises from THQ for 26 million) Company of Heroes 2 sold a staggering 380,000 copies. I know most of you will see this and say it isn’t over a million units so it is a failure, but you have to know that this report is from June 30th, the game launched on June 25th. The only other major SEGA retail title outside of Company of Heroes 2, was the Playstation Portable Japan only title 7th Dragon 2020-2. SEGA’s publishing side saw a year-over-year decrease of 9.7 percent, selling 1.21 million units.

SEGA also reported favorable performance of their digital games on Windows PC, Playstation Vita and mobile devices. SEGA-Sammy state that Phantasy Star Online 2 (Japan only for now) helped bring the operating income of the consumer division up to 39 million yen (approximately $396,000).

It should be a good year for SEGA with Total War: Rome II, Football Manager 2014 and Sonic Lost Worlds around the corner.

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Marza Animation Planet’s next movie is called ‘Robodog’

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If you didn’t know, SEGA-Sammy own a CGI animated studio called Marza Animation Planet, who is co-producing the Captain Harlock movie.

The studio has now announced its new film which has begun pre-production and will be their first original film. They got Henry F. Anderson III (Gnomeo & Juliet) directing, Paul Wang (Astro Boy, TMNT) producing and Jeannette Manifold (Happy Feet, All Dogs Go to Heaven) as head of production. Its based on a script by Robert Reese.

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Marza Animation Planet trademarks “Luna’s Arc”

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LunasArc2
Marza Animation Planet, a SEGA-Sammy owned CGI animation studio has trademarked the title ‘Luna’s Arc’.

This could be the title to their next film, which they chose the script from their online competition: Story Circus.  They have done the competition two years in a row and have picked up two full scripts to do an animated film on. Who knows, maybe next year us SEGAbit people will submit some scripts.

As for what this could be, who knows. Luna is Italian/Spanish for moon, which could me a space sort of film. What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

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Breaking down and explaining the SEGA Sammy Q3 2013 results

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Numbers nerds rejoice, SEGA has released their 3rd quarter earnings for 2013! Of course, to the average SEGA fan, it’s a lot to take in and a bit difficult to work out the positives and negatives. Thankfully, the SEGAbits community has members who know their stuff. So a big thanks to Aki-at for sharing the news and making sense of the many PDFs. Overall net profits currently stand at ¥3 billion (£20,433,810/$32,003,400), this is from an original ¥7 billion which dropped to ¥3 billion due to costs. SEGA arcade sales operating profits were ¥2,6 billion (£17,742,998/$27,993,160) while the consumer division profited ¥519 million (£3,541,775.37/$5,587,865.40) and arcade centers profited ¥984 million (£6,715,042.32/$10,594,334.40).

Sammy, meanwhile, recorded ¥7.7 billion operating profits (£52,512,691/$82,168,240), a decrease from last year’s ¥71 billion (£483,600,170/$757,413,800). It is important to note, however, that the arcade division had no new major titles being sold and that some pachislot machines were delayed. A Fist of the Northstar pachislot machine was forecasted to sell over 200,000 units. As such, numbers were adjusted to account for this changing the net income projection down from  ¥40 billion to ¥12 billion.

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SEGA Q2: Things are looking up thanks to new streamlining strategy

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SEGA assured that the changes they made would help the company and it doesn’t seem they are lying. SEGA has reported increased profits for the first quarter of the current fiscal year. Sadly the consumer business is still reporting losses, however SEGA has really reduced the losses year-over-year. Sadly the losses are contributed to the lack of demand for home video games in the U.S. and Europe.

SEGA only shifted 1.34 million units this quarter, which is down 42.5 perfect compared to 2.33 million year-over-year. SEGA has also stated that their free-to-play game Kingdom Conquest has been downloaded over 3 million times. No idea how many people opted for buying upgrades and other pay-to-use items.

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