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Sega Sammy sees fiscal net profit, Aliens shipped 1.3M, All-Stars Racing shipped 1.36M

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PSO2
 
Via Joystiq a bit of good news for SEGA fans, and even better news for SEGA parent company Sega Sammy Holdings. Sega Sammy revealed their financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31st, 2013, making note of a net profit of ¥33.5 billion ($331 million), an annual growth of 53.3 percent. However, Sega Sammy’s operating profit decreased year-on-year by 67.3 percent, down to ¥19.1 billion ($189 million). A large part of the net profit was through the sales of “investment securities” and transfers of employees’ pension benefits. Fun stuff.

Sega Sammy made note of a decreased demand for packaged games, and that the company has to adapt towards games on social networks and mobile devices. Don’t freak out, as the packaged games that SEGA has released have been quite successful. Aliens: Colonial Marines, despite all the bad press and low review scores, shipped 1.31 million units. Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed shipped 1.36 million units. SEGAbits reader, and tipster ROJM notes that Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed just might be the most succesful non-Mario related spin-off Sonic game in the third party Sega era. Football Manager 2013 is noted as selling just under 1 million, however Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson has recently tweeted that the title has since passed the 1 million mark. Yakuza 5 shipped 590,000 units. It should be noted that as a result of SEGA’s lessening of packaged games that the total number of packaged shipments saw a decline (down 10.8 million overall), but the decline makes sense and was surely expected.

The biggest success, gaming-wise, is Phantasy Star Online 2, with a subscription base of over 2.5 million on the the PC and Vita. As the game is free-to-play, this large number isn’t exactly a gauge for how much the game made in sales, but the company says in-game purchases have “exceeded forecasted levels.” So, the game is exceeding expectations. It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers change once PSO2 releases to the West. As for the future of SEGA, the company forecasts 11 games on PC, 7 on Wii U, 7 on PS3, 6 on 3DS, 5 on Vita, 4 on Xbox 360, and 2 on PSP in the fiscal year ending March 31 2014. The company estimates a 41 percent growth in net profit for the next fiscal year, up to ¥47 billion, or $464 million.

Update: SEGA’s future game forecast is SKU numbers, not game numbers. So say for example, the new Sonic game comes out on 3DS, that counts as one SKU for each region, so that would leave 3 SKU’s for 3DS, one of the other 3DS SKU’s is probably japan exclusive hatsune miku, so that leaves 2 3DS SKU left. Digital games aren’t taken into account for SEGA’s SKU forecast.

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Want a New English Trailer for Marza’s Captain Harlock Movie? Well Here You Go

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UPDATE: So this trailer keeps being taken down from Youtube. If the video above gets taken down again you can watch it here on Dailymotion.

If you weren’t sure yet if the Captain Harlock movie Marza Animation Planet is working on is actually coming to the west, a new English trailer got leaked yesterday from the site of the company that does the marketing for the film in the west. This trailer shows two and a half minutes of footage, mostly with a very not-Japanese song being played over it. I have to say, it’s looking pretty dang good.

Toei also released a couple of other trailers earlier this year and released a small 30 second teaser earlier this week. Besides this, merch and also a localized version of the script has been leaked, so there may be spoilers on the internet. The Japanese release date is September 7th, dates for other countries aren’t known yet.

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Timegate Studios lays off its entire staff

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"Free hugs!"

Timegate, developers of the decent digital title Section 8 and the “too big for its britches” Aliens: Colonial Marines (which Gearbox apparently outsourced a huge chunk of the project to) had filed for bankruptcy last week according to a post from Kotaku. But now it seems like they are going for a chapter 7 liquidation. It appears Timegates’ main publisher Southpeak has dissolved the studio entirely. Employees were sent home early today.

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Total War: Rome 2 Gets a Release Date, Pre-order DLC and a Collector’s Edition

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While we’ve already seen a whole bunch of neat stuff from Total War: Rome 2, there have been no details for when people can actually play the game. So today SEGA revealed on their blog that the global release date is September 3rd, 2013 for both digital stores like Steam and retail.

Of course, a game launch wouldn’t be complete without some pre-order DLC, which the above video shows off. This DLC is called the Greek States Culture Pack and will feature three new factions: Epirus, Athens and Sparta. This will be available on Steam on the same day as the full game for those who pre-order it. SEGA also revealed a pricey Collector’s Edition for the game, hit the jump to see what it includes.

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Zombie MAYhem – My Life with SEGA enters The House of the Dead

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Zombie MAYhem comes to a close with my review of The House of the Dead for SEGA Saturn.

The original was a smash in arcades way back in ’97. It spawned four sequels and two atrocious cinematic adaptations. While the arcade game was met with praise, the Saturn port was slammed pretty hard upon release. Game Revolution gave it ‘C’ and called it a “sloppy port” and warned “don’t go in this house”.

But how can this be? The Saturn gave us some stellar ports, like Virtua Fighter 2 and the Virtua Cop. Why is this? Watch and learn. Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

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Sonic 1 heading to 3DS…in 3-D!

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Sonic13ds

Looks like we’ll be getting a heavy dose of the original Sonic 1 this year.

Thanks to our sister site Sonic Retro, we have learned that Sega of Japan have announced Sonic 1 as the third Sega game (along with Space Harrier and Super Hang-On to get the 3-D treatment. It looks like this will not be the same as the version coming from Christian Whitehead for the iOS. While it will have full 3-D effects, it will still looks to be in 4:3 mode. Besides 3-D other new features include..

  • Switch between Japan/Western version with some minor differences.
  • Spin Dash.
  • New animations in backgrounds like rippling effects in water.
  • CRT mode to give it that “classic” look.
  • Full controller customization. Set it to press A to jump or B to jump, or X to Jump or Y to well you know where I’m going here.
  • Sound settings for PSG and FM.

While the game will be coming to Japan on the 15th, but given how long it’s taking Space Harrier and Super Hang-On to come over here, it may be awhile before we see it stateside.

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Sonic Talk #19: Ask Ian Part Duex

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It’s been 13 episodes, but Sonic and Mega Man comic scribe Ian Flynn is back for another interview! We’ve got over two hours of questions from you, the fans! We’ll be taking about World’s Collide, the future of the books, his team up with Dawn Best on Sylvanna and his work on the superhero comic, The New Crusaders.Also, check out my written interview with Ian over at the Sonic Stadium.

For those waiting for the MP3/iTunes version, that will be up later this week.

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SEGA Tunes: Sonic Adventure’s Run Through the Speed Highway

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You know what had an awesome soundtrack? Sonic Adventure. Even if you hate the cheesy rock tunes of Crush40, it is hard to deny that Adventure’s soundtrack was by and large pretty awesome. Some of the game’s best tracks were those that went well with the blistering pace of Sonic’s levels. Case in point, “Run Through the Speed Highway”, the first theme of Speed Highway. Enjoy!

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SEGA Memories: Wacky Worlds

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Wacky Worlds_009
These days, gamers can be quite adamant about the legitimacy of video games as an art form. I certainly wouldn’t disagree: a case can be made that making great video games requires just as much creativity as any book or movie. But I think what often gets lost in this pursuit to prove that the video game is a form of artistic expression is the fact that video games are also, essentially, toys. Especially games from the 80s and 90s, and Wacky Worlds was one of my favorite toys from the 90s.

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Round Table: Which ex-SEGA developers do you miss the most?

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exsegaroundtable
Most people follow around sport teams and their players, here at SEGAbits we follow SEGA studios and developers. There have been tons of employees and developers that SEGA have fired or left throughout its long history, as is expected with every big publisher. But sometimes there is that developer that was behind one of your favorite games, when he leaves the company it really tugs at the heart strings. So in this week’s round table we will be discussing which ex-SEGA developers we miss the most!

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SEGA and Gearbox claim Aliens: Colonial Marines lawsuit is “without merit”

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Aliens4

Just a few short days after a class-action lawsuit filing in the California court system claiming that SEGA and Gearbox released and sold Aliens: Colonial Marines to the public under the pretense of false advertising, the two companies have responded by unsurprisingly dismissing it .

“SEGA cannot comment on specifics of ongoing litigation, but we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously,” the publisher said.

Gearbox, however, wasn’t quite so soft of the wording, defending its use of unlabeled demonstration walkthroughs.

“Attempting to wring a class action lawsuit out of a demonstration is beyond meritless. We continue to support the game, and will defend the rights of entertainers to share their works-in-progress without fear of frivolous litigation.”

As it stands, there’s little doubt that due to the very focused nature of the lawsuit that this whole scenario will ultimately end up just being withdrawn or thrown out by a judge. The damage has likely been done in the eyes of players however in terms of the public relations perception, more so for the developer Gearbox than Sega.

The response comes after news that co-developer Timegate Studios has filed for bankruptcy.

[Via Kotaku]

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Banjo- Kazooie composer creating the soundtrack for Castle of Illusion HD

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SEGA and Disney are teaming up to bring Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD to all major platforms, the remake will even have a new soundtrack for what it seems. They are teaming up with Grant Kirkhope who is best known for his soundtrack in Rare games like Bajo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Golden Eye. Mr. Kirkhope tweeted the following a few days ago.

‘Should hopefully finish my final piece for “Castle of Illusion HD starring Mickey Mouse” tonight!!!’ – Via Grant Kirkhope’s twitter.

So new graphics, new box art and new soundtrack? Hows that for a remake?

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Aliens: Colonial Marines co-developer TimeGate studios files for bankruptcy

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Timegate
TimeGates Studios, who where previously known for their Section 8 games and now for co-developing the controversial Aliens: Colonial Marines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas Southern Bankruptcy court yesterday.

The guys over at Polygon obtained the court papers, which stated that the developer is in debt to more than 50 creditors and owed total liabilities ranging from $10-$50 million dollars. Their top creditors include Epic Games (Unreal Engine), Agora Games (online game service), and DJ2 Entertainment. Funny enough, a local pizza shop was listed in the documents, which TimeGate owes $34.80. Wow, are these developers all in the 7th grade that they can’t pay a $35 dollar bill?

I guess life isn’t good for TimeGates Studios and the recent class action lawsuit isn’t going to help them. Weird seeing them lose all this money and still announce a game last month.

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