List of Studios Sega Fucked/Shuttered

[cube_b3]

So I was reading about Activision's plans for Bizzare Creations on the blog and considered castigating them for considering disbandment.

Then I immediately thought about all the studios EA has fucked with and shuttered.

The recent bankruptcy of the legendary company Midway also came to mind (while Mortal Kombat was acquired by Warner, several studios didn't survive).

And finally I thought about Sega, recently they shuttered Secret Level although few would argue that Secret Level should exist after they fucked 3 games in a row.

While Secret Level deserved the boot, other studios didn't. I guess the most recent example would be Guy Wilday's SRS (Sega Racing Studio) a good studio, capable of making fun games was giving the boot. well that isn't true. A deal was made with CodeMaster and they absorbed the entire team.

Other studios from Sega's Past haven't been so lucky, No Cliche is perhaps the best example acquired during the Dreamcast era by Sega Europe responsible for Dreamcast classic's such as Toy Commander and Quake 3 Arena was really fucked bad by Sega. They were 75% through developing a Survival Horror game for Dreamcast, when Sega stopped funding of the game, they tried to survive by porting an enhanced version of Toy Commander to PC but the port couldn't materialize and the studio was disbanded mainly cause Sega was no longer interested in them.
http://www.gamekult.com/articles/A0000001184/ (Agarhta Screen Shots still look good)

A perfectly capable destroyed, Sir Frédérick Raynal head of the studio suffered for several years after the foreclosure until finally landing a job at UbiSoft.

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Other contracted studios have suffered as well at the hands of Sega.

The Late Amuze entertainment worked for 3 years developing one of the best games for Dreamcast HEADHUNTER, the game still holds up well against the finest 6th generation games today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headhunter_(video_game)
How did Sega pay them for all their hard work, by not releasing HeadHunter outside Europe, they released a sequel to HeadHunter that I haven't played yet, but I hear it wasn't as good as the original.

The Studio closed soon after HeadHunter: Redemption.
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There are several other studios on the list, that have suffered because of Sega's poor decision making skills which studio do you feel most passionately about?

I'm personally torn between these Amuze and No Cliche.

[George]

... how is studios, independent, that couldn't afford to stay open, SEGAs fault?

[Team Andromeda]

No Cliche did not make Quake III that was Raster productions.

To be honest I was more pissed off with the way SEGA treated Technosft and Lobotomy. Both great companies and both companies SEGA didn't help when they hit money troubles .

SEGA didn't have too of coruse , but they really should have. You also unhappy when SEGA dropped WARP's planned RPG for the Dreamcast and the piss poor way they treated Camelot

[crackdude]

What happaned to Sega Rosso/AM3? That was a fucking kick-ass studio.

[Sharky]

What happaned to Sega Rosso/AM3? That was a fucking kick-ass studio.

They still exist, just with out name.

A big mistake really. When companies have smaller development studios for fans to admire or hate it becomes harder to hate the overall company.

As just 'Sega' alone it is easy to paint 'Sega' the company that made Shenmue as Sega the company that 'made' Golden Axe Beast Riders.

[crackdude]

Golden Axe is enjoyable. But I don't get the IronMan and Hulk games.

And I'm happy to hear they still exist! What are they called now? Are there some games coming?

[Sharky]

Not sure what they are called now but they don't really have any identity so to speak...

[Grant360]

Secret Level were purchased because of their impressive graphics tech demos on 6th gen hardware. I think visually the games were good but Sega possibly needed to hold SL's hand a little more.

SRS are the ones I am gutted they dropped. Sega Rally was beautiful and a Daytona or Outrun game (not to mention future Sega Rally's) would have been superb. Thankfully they were absorbed by codemasters of DiRT and F1 2010 fame and Sumo developed the superb Outrun Online and SASASR!

[Sega Uranus]

SRS was the only company SEGA ever really dropped that I feel had any potential. I am mad certain branches were blended into other ones, like how VGA was moved into Sonic Team. I also think STI should have lived on for generations to come, but they were pretty much drained by the time they were closed anyways.

Secret Level was bought for the wrong reasons. Their strengths laid in porting, not direct development. They were out of their element and with no support from SEGA (Simon pretty much said they were worthless, along with having no love from the community) it was just clearly dying within minutes of signing up with SEGA. They should have stuck with porting, they could have moved stuff like Yakuza 3 onto the Xbox 360 and Sonic Unleashed on the PC, along with support for making the PlayStation 3 versions of that and a few others like Viking and Bayonetta better.

Both of these are really just Simon "Classic Sonic Doesn't Jell" Jeffry's fault though, so yeah.

[cube_b3]

He basically bought Secret Level cause he wasn't competent enough to build a studio like he was instructed, this much is on record.

Poor Simon really sucked at PR talk, lol.

Also this thread is poorly written I need to edit the main post into something alittle more coherent.

[ROJM]

I'm getting tired of the SJ bashing talk. If he was that crap then sega wouldn't have been able to improve their marketshare from 27th place to 6 or 7th on the top twenty publishers list while he was there(and that was before the Platinum and Overkill titles came out. Yes he wasn't perfect and one of his flaws was he signed Sega to do too many games with indie devs without actually just resting on just a couple of them. But he wasn't the worst one, that place is reserved for Stolar and fuckfacre Moore in charge during the DC era. That was hellish times to live through if you were a sega buyer back then.