I never thought it was accurate or fair to lessen the greatness of the Total War and Football Manager (and now Company of Heroes) titles because they weren't born inside SEGA. It's like we're going back to that "SEGA DNA" nonsense, where a game needs to have certain "SEGA-ish" elements in order to be a proper SEGA title. It's like some sort of game racism... "gameism?"
Not published in Japan? Strike one. Not originally conceived in-house? Strike two.
Honestly, I think anything The Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive created under SEGA's ownership are games SEGA have produced. A SEGA employee is a SEGA employee. Just because a studio and IP are bought by SEGA doesn't mean that the employees and the titles created under SEGA's ownership are somehow lesser than those at Sonic Team or Ryū ga Gotoku Studio. I'm proud to list off a name of studios and say "The Creative Assembly" and "Sonic Team" in the same sentence.
Probably one of my favorite moves by SEGA recently was the inclusion of Shogun and Football Manager in All-Stars Transformed for PC (wish they were on consoles too...). Really made them all feel like they were of the same family (which they are).
It's not as though I feel like they're not great games. I just find it frustrating that Sega has to buy great studios because the ones they have in Japan are rubbish. And I know that's not why they were bought (good studios, expand Sega's profile and so on), but it seems sort of implicit to me.
I feel like they're part of the family, but in the States it feels like they're the only part of the family worth seeing at times. And it's not as though Sega really did anything. They bought a studio and let it keep doing what it had been doing. No ingenuity. They're Sega employees, but they'd have likely done the same things had they stayed with Activision (save, of course, their upcoming Aliens and Warhammer games, which I'm pleased to see).
When a bunch of Namco guys joined Sega back in the early 90s, fresh off of Ridge Racer, they got to work on Sega Rally, Sega Touring Championship, and by the end of the decade they were making Star Wars and Cosmic Smash. They were, for lack of a better term, assimilated into Sega's culture. I've always had the vibe that Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive were just sort of...there. A part of Sega, but not. I am glad that they're working on that Aliens and Warhammer game, that they're represented in All Stars, and that they helped port some Sonic games. I would like them to keep it up. I wouldn't mind if they took a stab at some classic Sega properties, as well. Maybe they could work on an SRPG. I wish Sports Interactive would do something like that as well.
It's like if Sega still had 2K (and I really, really, really wish they did). It would be upsetting if all Sega was churning out worth consistently buying were sports games. Right now it feels like the only good games Sega has been churning out consistently are good RTS games, with the periodic update/tweak to a now seven (!) year old fighting game and something Sonic.
On the topic of Virtua Fighter, have they forgotten that its now twenty years old? Where the hell is the anniversary blowout? I was really ready for VF 6 after all the teasing we got last year, between X Zone, Dead or Alive, Final Showdown and so on.
Maybe I'm just in a bitchy mood.