Well, they were made of RGG Studio and RGG Studio is too busy with Yakuza franchise.
We're just so lucky they have time to make Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown and Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, but doubt they'll try new thing for next two years.
I'm glad Sega still have subsidiaries that allow them to still be regarded as game developers than just game producers. They barely touch their old IPs these days, they usually just allow third-party developers to make their games for them.
Kinect games weren't selling well, they're kinda niche market. Arcade games on the contrary ...
Arcade games are profitable. Even with COVID'19 screwing up the Arcade business, arcade games can be remade into mobile games where micro-transactions replace the token.
The Kinect was more of an experimental thing. An overly hyped EyeToy. I believed Sega's mindset at the time was noticing there were no horror games for the Kinect so they figured it might be a niche market.
My issue is it that they sort of have tunnel vision about this decisions. They saw a potential and tried to be the first to take it, thus they put together Rise of Nightmares and see if it sticks. They only put so much thought in the game and likely just borrowed concepts from Amnesia: The Dark Descent to make it work.
I'm not saying the story or set up of Rise of Nightmares is bad... it's just as a game "it didn't stuck", mostly because of the Kinect controls. Instead of Sega asking "is this salvageable?" or "What else can we do with this?", instead they just move on and don't talk of it ever again.
I just see that as a waste of potential. They could of made a VR re-release of the demo to see if audience would be interested in a full release or just re-release it without the Kinect controls. The game still had praise after all, it was just the Kinect holding it back.
I mean, they likely would of done the same to The House of the Dead if it didn't do as good as they hoped. Just ditch it and move on.
It would be slaundered with bad critics saying "the game was too short" even if they added story or modes to it.
Arcade games have no problem with being short.
THotD Remake was rather short and I only heard praise from it. All Sega has to do is release Scarlet Dawn for around £20-30 or so. Cheaper than a usual new game but enough to cover cost of multiple arcade tokens. Critics can't really complain over short games if priced cheaply.
I played THotD3on arcade, but I also have it on the Wii. It's being bundled with THotD2.
Bundling arcade games is a good way to give sell arcade games for fairer price.
So maybe a a "bundle", they could sell House of the Dead Remake and Scarlet Dawn together.
No, its development was indeed finished by Extended Play but it was made first by Recreational Brainware, which was under SEGA of America.
Still Chakan is not SEGA's franchise though, just like Aliens series.
Well if Sega have possession of rights to the Chakan series then I can imagine them rebooting it into a horror game. But it comes down on whenever it's worthwhile for them or not... which they probably regarded "was not" given it was cancelled for the Dreamcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXPeKCiIGFshttps://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/09/chakan-dc-tech-demo-cancelled/No again. Vic Tokai actually made a game called "Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibouken" for SEGA Mega Drive.
SEGA then bought the right of the game and then reskinned the game with new characters, horror theme, redesigned levels, and new soundtrack for western version.
The reskinned version called Decap Attack, was developed and published by SEGA of America, that's why SEGA could always put the game in any Genesis / Mega Drive compilation.
Ooooh... Well, I still don't regard Decap Attack all that scary... Or the very least we Brits don't.
There were four more.
Altered Beast series, Alien Syndrome, Alien Storm, and Alien 3: The Gun were also both developed and published by Sega.
You can count out Alien 3: The Gun though if you don't want non SEGA franchise.
They might not be as scary as The House of the Dead series but that's because they're limited to the technology of that time.
Did Alien Syndrome get a remake recently? But it would be cool if we had an Alien Syndrome remake. Especially if David Cronenberg was willing to design the aliens.
And if we are not limited to classic era, we could add four more...
Deep Fear, Zombie Revenge, Golden Gun, and Let's Go Island series
There are also more of Saturn games but they are exclusive to Japan only.
I'm not going to count Zombie Revenge and Golden Gun as "potential" because Zombie Revenge was the only THotD spin-off that tried to be anything other than an on-rail shooter or like Resident Evil and it was mostly ignored all this time up until Project X Zone where Zombie Revenge was chosen over the arcade games themselves to represent THotD, which if you ask me speaks volumes in a mostly overlooked game.
As for Golden Gun... it's just THotD only with Chinese demons instead of cloned mutants. Same with Vampire Night. It's just arcade shooters with bare minimum of story applied to it and I doubt Sega will do anything more with these.
Deep Fear I believe does have potential. Bu-u-ut Deep Fear was compared too much with Resident Evil at the time. However Deep Fear was the first survival horror game to introduce a virus that caused severe mutations while that was a later thing for the Resident Evil franchise.
Again, it all comes down to "Why expect The House of the Dead or Deep Fear to be like Resident Evil when you can just play Resident Evil?"
I never played "Let's Go Island" so I dunno what's that like.