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What can Sega do to succeed?

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3. Sonic 5 with just Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, caged-animals, Eggman, and physics-based level design. More adult-oriented.

Sonic games have traditionally and historically sold to young fan bases, and those young fans are the ones who have kept the franchise relevant in the recent years. Your solution for Sega's money problems is to make a Sonic game aimed at adults?

That's about as good of an idea as the Virtualboy was.
 
Selling Sonic, Bayonetta, Monkey Ball, and Jet Set Radio to Nintendo would be a good start.

a) This doesn't help Sega succeed...
b) If Bayonetta 2 is anything to go off, it wouldn't be around much longer regardless (and I don't see JSR faring any better).
 
I say this with great love and affection.

Background low budget efforts:
Get porting their back catalog to the pc and mobile. Exploit all their older IP for F2P mobile games done by small teams and in more genres.

Mid-steam: Start pushing Microsoft and Sony for funding some B tier console exclusive efforts.

A to AAA: Focus everything on Relic and Creative Assembly. Maybe establish a new studio in the UK to catch top talent. No classic Sega IP done at this level.
 
I'd really like for Sega to rerelease old gems and compilations and coast off of sales of those to fund new original projects that take them back to what made them great in the first place.
 
I'm not really sure what they can do at this point in all honesty. They don't seem to be in a position to spend a lot of money on big budget releases, and considering their bigger rereleases/remakes, like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, JSR, NiGHTS, Sonic Taxman games, Streets of Rage Trilogy XBLA, etc. doesn't seem to have helped them any, I don't think rereleasing more of the obscure games like Skies of Arcadia and Shenmue are going to spring life back into them.
 
They need a couple of successful, high profile sports franchises, and to continuously create good Sonic games and Sonic spinoffs.

If they can achieve that, then they can do whatever they want and not worry about it too much, including giving us the core retro legacy stuff we want.
 
Make a good Sonic game.

But for real, they need to find a way to make a buzz in the west with their titles. They can make some great games, but they always go unnoticed because of how niche they are. Vanquish could have had more noise if it was given the chance and the same thing for the Yakuza games.

There is nothing wrong with their games outside of Sonic. They just need to give their other IPs a chance.
 
Sega is suffering the same problem they have suffered for the past twenty-five years. The company has an identity crisis. It's really always been the companies downfall. Back in the 90s the company wrestled internally whether it was primarily an arcade company or a console company. Whether it was primarily a Japanese company or an international one. As time has gone on the identity crisis persisted just with different identities. Today people don't really recognize Sega as primarily an arcade or console company, at least int he same context. However, Sega does currently have three different identities it is juggling.

The first is its Western focused identity that focuses on publishing games like Company of Heroes and Alien games. The second is the traditional Sega known for the classic franchises like Streets of Rage, House of the Dead, Jet Set Radio, and of course Sonic. They even once in a while release new games that fall in the same vein of this such as Valkyria Chronicles and Yakuza. The third identity, and the most hated, is the mobile and F2P Sega most notable for games like Spiral Knights and Chain Chronicles.

Now I'm not saying having different identities for a company is bad. In fact it is very good and necessary to survive as a successful company. Nintendo for example had extraordinary success last generation balancing the identity of traditional "hardcore" Nintendo with games like Zelda and Metroid with the then new casual friendly Nintendo with Wii Sports and Brain Age. There are many other examples but I don't want to make this post too long.

Basically while other large gaming companies have found a healthy balance of their identities Sega has not. Let's start with the most obvious, traditional Sega. First off, so many of their games STILL haven't been released. Panzer Dragoon, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia have not seen a release on PC, PS4, Xbone, and/or Wii U. This would be understandable if their previous classics they released on these systems flopped, it would make sense. However, this hasn't happened at all. The Dreamcast Bundle always seems to sell well on Steam and Humblestore, and Jet Set Radio HD was successful. Even the recently released Valkyria Chronicles, a series that essentially flopped twice when given to North America (the first game on PS3, and the second game on PSP) is doing exceptionally well. So what's stopping Shenmue from being released on PC or even more recent games like Yakuza? Hell classic JRPGs seem to be "in" right now with PC gaming as Final Fanstasy games have been selling pretty well on the platform. Where is Skies of Arcadia? There is a reason why HD remasters are the latest craze, they are incredibly easy money. By not putting these games on modern systems.

What this also shows is that there is still demand for the traditional Sega games. Yet despite this what traditional Sega games are in development? I mean all I can think of recently is Phantasy Star Online 2 and that isn't even in English yet and may never be. People would argue that the amount of people who would pay $60 for a modern Jet Set Radio wouldn't warrent the $40 million it would take to develop. However, Nintendo has shown that you don't have to spend tens of millions to make modern classic style game that can sell well, and Sega should take note.

When it comes to the Western identity, well they are trying and doing better. They purchased Relic who is doing good work and Alien Isolation was a win for them.Football Manager and Total War continues to impress. However they should diverse the developers they have a bit. It seems a bit too RTS heavy. As for their F2P games, well this is uncharted territory with huge potential profits. It may piss some people here off, but the reality is that these games help fund their other ventures. I'm going to be honest, I'm not as familiar with this side of Sega so it's hard to comment.

Overall, I can't really say for certain what they have to do to succeed. All I can say is more focus and just common sense. I mean if you are going to release your classic games on digital services, then release them. It's insane that while even most of Square-Enix's games are available on modern platforms Sega is still lagging. Also a bit more common sense is needed in the company. As much as people, including I, love Platinum Games...their games just don't sell. There was no reason to give that studio multiple trys before accepting that they don't make profitable games. Phantasy Star Online 2 must have been very expensive to create, so why leave it in Japan? I know it has a lot of text and that is expensive to translate, but why would you make a game with such a sizable cost and only leave it in a country where MMOs aren't that popular? That makes no sense.

Again, I'm not sure the best way for Sega to balance their output as I don't have access to the costs, sales, and profits to each individual game , but I feel that they certainly can do better.
 
Their decision to abandon retail was a step in the right direction. If you can't be an AAA publisher capable of producing massively budgeted games for the lowest common denominator, then the model of premium-priced retail games isn't for you anymore.

SEGA should rebuild their internal teams and focus on developing high-profile downloadable games, with international appeal, for Steam, XBLA and PSN.

If you can't be an AAA publisher then you need to find your audience, and leverage the kind of concepts that play to your strengths, to cater to that audience in a way that is sustainable.
 
The obvious choices are:

1) "Low" budget Arcade games, which is what put Sega on the map in first place.
2) Sell the Shenmue franchise to somebody else (likely Sony), who will develop Shenmue 3, 4 and 5 (last) as one whole project.

For the second one it's quite crucial to:
1) Not have Sega directly involved in the development. They don't have the means to produce AAA titles anymore and by then it wouldn't be their IP anyway.
2) Yu Suzuki. Goes without saying, though will have to control his desire to spend a fortune in this and the way to do is to develop just one and last Shenmue game, which will be split into three parts for marketing and storytelling reasons.
3) Run a Kickstarter. Realistically will "only" get 1 million, but it's something.
4) Re-Release 1+2 HD as one $60 game. Actually that continuity is not bad at all for fans, since saves from previous games are supposed to be crucial for the development of the storyline (and the PS4 can't read Dreamcast VMUs).
5) Bundles, lots of them. 3+4+5, 1+2+3+4+5, consoles, etc. etc.
 
Honestly, mobile and f2p stuff.

They could have had a success like Destiny with PSO, they so dumm.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--r1KHnVlK--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/glfzbn4av1kk0wc2d30r.jpg/IMG][/QUOTE]

The animuness of PSO alone would prevent any chance of that happening.
 
The obvious answers are:


2) Sell the Shenmue franchise to somebody else (likely Sony), who will develop Shenmue 3, 4 and 5 as one whole project. Sell 1+2 HD as one $60 game, sell the other three separately ($60 x3). Offer a $200 bundle with all of them.

What makes you think Sony would want it?

Some of these ideas sound like wet dreams than anything practical. Shenmue is not going to save Sega. lol
 
What makes you think Sony would want it?

Some of these ideas sound like wet dreams than anything practical. Shenmue is not going to save Sega. lol

Both Sony and Microsoft have been very much closely related to Sega from even before those two joined the industry. In particular and as I assume you already know, in recent years Sony has been quite close to Sega, even showing interest in both the Shenmue and the Yakuza franchises.

The idea is that right now Sega has quite a lot of IPs just sitting around, producing next to nothing for it. Those only produce revenue in the case somebody else offers Sega to use their IPs for games and merchandise not produced nor supervised by Sega itself, which is why in the past decade there's been so many awful releases associated to Sega franchises.

With that said, I think Sega could sell and entirely get rid of the IPs that still have potential to make a comeback, that Sega can't exploit and aren't bringing money to it, Shenmue included; at least while they have some value. As I wrote in that post, the idea is that Sega "sells" Shenmue to somebody else, so that IP alone is not going to "save" Sega at all but it will bring some money in.

In other words, Sega does not even have the resources to develop a single new Shenmue game, isn't making revenue of one of its biggest franchises and most likely not even the talent inside the company to do a good job at it, but that name still can be a console seller for somebody else and isn't necessarily a money pit if some conditions are met.
 
they're kinda doing it these last few years, is the thing

i honestly can't tell you why PSO 2.0 isn't out here though, nevermind how well such a huge F2P could've been in the early PS4 drought

Shenmue 3

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Outside of basically starting over, I don't see how they can.

Yep. No easier path to success than porting unsuccessful 15 year old games to new consoles.

I guess my advice would be to stop listening to your fans. They don't want new games, they want a time machine.

your ability to make bad posts, it's like a gift

But PSO was actually good.

preach


hahaha how have i not seen this before

Step 1: Don't be Sega.

thought-provoking post, would skip past again
 
Both Sony and Microsoft have been very much closely related to Sega from even before those two joined the industry. In particular and as I assume you already know, in recent years Sony has been quite close to Sega, even showing interest in both Shenmue and the Yakuza franchises.

The idea is that right now Sega has quite a lot of IPs just sitting around, producing next to nothing for it. Right now those only produce revenue in the case somebody else offers Sega to use their IPs for products not produced by Sega itself, which is why in the past decade there's been so many awful releases associated to Sega franchises.
With that said, I think Sega could sell and entirely get rid of some of those IPs that still have potential to make a comeback while they still have some value, Shenmue included. As I wrote in that post, Sega does not even have the resources to develop a single new Shenmue game, and most likely not even the talent inside the company, but that name still can be a console seller for somebody else and isn't necessarily a money pit if some conditions are met.

No it really can't.

I haven't seen anything but lip service from Sony on that. Selling off it's ips is not necessarily a bad idea but focusing specifically on Shenmue as a way to turnaround their fortunes doesn't make any sense.
 
PSO2 F2P on PS4 would probably = Gold mine
But only if it came to the west first.

Not too sure about PC but probably there as well since the game is pretty easy to run
 
No it really can't.

I haven't seen anything but lip service from Sony on that. Selling off it's ips is not necessarily a bad idea but focusing specifically on Shenmue as a way to turnaround their fortunes doesn't make any sense.

Of course it won't be the only console seller and, again, the Shenmue franchise isn't necessarily a money pit.

Also, you do know they already do what you described with the Gran Turismo series, right? As of 2015 most likely Sony loses money with that series, just like Microsoft most likely does with Turn 10. The reason for both is the same: they are console sellers.

If it isn't clear, GT6 sold quite poorly for a GT series game. Then you have to consider that it's documented that PD requires 10 million dollars a year just to operate, which will increase every year as racing games are ever getting more expensive to make, to which you have to add that franchise has a huge marketing budget that goes into GT Academy, sponsoring everything racing related and their very own events as well. Other companies factor in both as operating costs, for example when comparing the most expensive games to produce of all time, but PD separates them which makes things a bit fuzzy. After all that comes what happens with any other company in a similar situation, which is that Sony publishes the game (another huge cut) and keeps 100% of the profits it makes, while PD sees nothing of that.

In other words, the costs associated to releasing new GT series games are ever increasing yet they are selling way less than they did, especially considering the huge development cycles they are currently experiencing.

edit: For further info, please read http://pitstop.gran-turismo.com/en/. Read between the lines when they give explanations on some of GT6's shortcomings.

This is even clearer with the Forza series: sells way less than the latest GT games, but still the in-house staff and the outsourcing jobs are several times larger. There's absolutely no way the Forza series is self-sustainable without Microsoft behind it, and to a point the same can be said about PD.
 
Mobile and PC + F2P and Sonic for consoles really; it's in their interests to double down on distribution models where they can make money for longer sustained periods with less risk involved. Traditional games wise outside of Sonic, there may be room for Aliens but that's it as they seemingly have little interest in Western markets compared to Asia (understandably when you look at sales).

Of course, Creative Assembly and Relic Ent. will continue to do their thing on PC.
 
I would increase the company's quality standards. Take some cues from the (good) ways Nintendo handles their franchises.

  • Bring some top designers up to help make business decisions.
  • Build back up internal studios from the Dreamcast era and earlier(Smilebit, Overworks, etc).
  • Give a little bit more of a marketing push towards the smaller games and rereleases. Partner up with very passionate fansites like HardcoreGaming101.
  • More Miku. Keep the same standard.
  • More F2P and mobile, focusing on original titles so we don't tarnish our current franchises. Use these to build up our war chest.
  • Localize PSO2 for the West and give a huge apology bonus to fans.
  • Restrict Sonic games to once every 2 to 3 years. For the next Sonic game, design it after Colors and Generations.
    OR
  • Commission Treasure to make a new Sonic, a huge budget and all the time they need.
  • Create a robust, Little Big Planet-esque 2D Sonic editor. Allow players to not only create levels, but make their own neat gimmicks and art assets. The modding community for Sonic games are mind-blowingly talented and giving them the legit tools to make more will instill a ton of faith.
  • Restart development on Shenmue 3, release the first 2 in HD. In this era of dense, open world games, it's impossible to say this can't be done.
  • Release more ports/remakes/HD rereleases to current consoles and PC such as:
  • Sonic Colors HD for PC and Wii U.
  • Arcade games such as Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder and Outrunners for Consoles and PC.
  • Sega CD, 32X and Saturn titles including Knuckles Chaotix, Astal, Dark Savior, Legend of Oasis, and Kolibri.
  • Open source a few SMS and Mega Drive games.
  • The Sonic Advance series for Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console.
  • Typing of the Dead. Better yet, give Typing of the Dead Overkill a huge patch to fix some of its problems.
 
Of course it won't be the only console seller and, again, the Shenmue franchise isn't necessarily a money pit.

Also, you do know they already do what you described with the Gran Turismo series, right? As of 2015 most likely Sony loses money with that series, just like Microsoft most likely does with Turn 10. The reason for both is the same: they are console sellers.

If it isn't clear, GT6 sold quite poorly for a GT series game. Then you have to consider that it's documented that PD requires 10 million dollars a year just to operate, which will increase every year as racing games are ever getting more expensive to make, to which you have to add that franchise has a huge marketing budget that goes into GT Academy, sponsoring everything racing related and their very own events as well. After all that comes what happens with any other company in a similar situation, which is that Sony publishes the game (another huge cut) and keeps 100% of the profits it makes, while PD sees nothing of that.

In other words, the costs associated to releasing new GT series games are ever increasing yet they are selling way less than they did, especially considering the huge development cycles they are currently experiencing.

This is even clearer with the Forza series: sells way less than the latest GT games, but still the in-house staff and the outsourcing jobs are several times larger. There's absolutely no way the Forza series is self-sustainable without Microsoft behind it, and to a point the same can be said about PD.

I still don't understand your point. Are talking about saving Sega or a risk analysis for Sony releasing a new Shenmue? I don't see how the increasing costs Sony has to put into GT has anything to do with anything. They want to do Shenmue because PD is losing them money? That seems to be what you're saying.
 
I still don't understand your point. Are talking about saving Sega or a risk analysis for Sony releasing a new Shenmue? I don't see how the increasing costs Sony has to put into GT has anything to do with anything. They want to do Shenmue because PD is losing them money? That seems to be what you're saying.

The risk for Sony to release a new Shenmue, by its own.

As I said, my idea is for Sega to not be involved in the making of the next Shenmue games, at all. Sega's only role is to entirely sell the IP to Sony, the latter which will be taking all the risks.

Then even in the case Sony does lose some money with the project that still isn't necessarily bad news, if that franchise manages to be a console seller. The same happens with the two biggest racing games franchises on consoles.


In the whole the point is: "What can Sega do to succeed?"
a) Go back to making Arcade-like games, as that's what they do best and don't require that much budget to make, and
b) Sell their unused IPs, entirely dissociating from them. Shenmue is only one example, out of many.
 
The risk for Sony to release a new Shenmue, by its own.

As I said, my idea is for Sega to not be involved in the making of the next Shenmue games, at all. Sega's only role is to entirely sell the IP to Sony, the latter which will be taking all the risks.

Then even in the case Sony does lose some money with the project that still isn't necessarily bad news, if that franchise manages to be a console seller. The same happens with the two biggest racing games franchises on consoles.

Okay but comparing Shenmue to GT is quite a leap and Sony is already in a very bad financial position. I don't think they would care to put GT money into something like Shenmue which is not going to have the same kind of appeal anyway. That doesn't seem to make any business sense.
 
Selling Sonic, Bayonetta, Monkey Ball, and Jet Set Radio to Nintendo would be a good start.
Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with Jet Set Radio. Sony and Microsoft could handle that one much better.

Hell, they could've handled Bayonetta 2 better looking at its sales numbers :/
 
But...it's a valid answer?

Sega doing what they've done in the past is kinda what has screwed them over.

Just think about it.

Was meant to be a little funny, but it's also kind of a serious answer.

well okay, but it's pretty dismissive of the OP's intent, i mean saying "don't do the stuff that got Sammy to buy/gut you in the early aughts" doesn't really apply over a decade later, right?
 
Okay but comparing Shenmue to GT is quite a leap and Sony is already in a very bad financial position. I don't think they would care to put GT money into something like Shenmue which is not going to have the same kind of appeal anyway. That doesn't seem to make any business sense.

The comparison with the GT series and with racing games as a whole is to say that some games do make business sense even in the case there's some losses. All of the big three do what I described, some for having exclusivity in order to sell consoles as it could be Shenmue's case.
(in Nintendo's case it will be with Project Cars, since no one is going to buy it but still the Wii U has to have a realistic looking racing game).


Anyway, "GT money" - as in making single games with an over $60m budget (most likely more than that) - is not needed for Shenmue.

Shenmue 3, 4 and 5 are related to each other and some aspects of it are already done, such as the script and game design. In actuality it's one development cycle, that for releasing four (1+2 3 4 5) to five games (1 2 3 4 5) that have to played in succession.


But again, more than the Shenmue example the idea is that Sega could sell their IPs that are unused and that will remain so. Shenmue happens to be more expensive to take advantage of than the rest, but some other Sega franchises could be really useful to Nintendo (that loves re-releasing games), Microsoft (the Xbox consoles are the spiritual successors of Sega's own) and of course to Sony (that already has shown interest in this idea for a good reason).

I chose Shenmue as the main example for that point because that IP is one of Sega's biggest assets in the console division (so excluding Pachinko machines) and at the same time is one of the most unused, with practically no usage in over a decade. At least Crazy Taxi has been and will be re-released many times over for every new platform that comes up, so Sega could keep it.
 
To elaborate more and what I said before I think selling out to Nintendo would be of little benefit to a Sega fan as I don't think the companies are as compatible as many people think. I couldn't see Nintendo making a Yakuza or a Virtua Fighter or anything that suits their arcade heritage. Sonic's the only one who might fit with them and even that's not a sure thing as a lot of Nintendo fans don't like Sonic and like to claim he was never good in the first place.

A lot of SEGA's IPs (specifically the games you've mentioned) most likely would shrivel up and die in Nintendo's software ecosystem or be left to rot due to the fact that many of them are very unprofitable, but I really don't know where you're ideas about the relationship between Nintendo's audience and Sonic games; if sales are anything to go by (which most of the time, they are.) Nintendo's key demographic(s) and core fans love Sonic games regardless of whether the character is platforming or kart racing.
If anything I think there are probably a lot of Nintendo fans who feel that Sonic would be a lot better off as an exclusive Nintendo developed IP for a number of reasons.
The franchise is reasonably popular so it wouldn't be ignored, Nintendo's key audience(s) find the series appealing, many of Nintendo's devs are incredibly skilled and talented (especially at making platformers), Nintendo's devs have a wealth of valuable built-up knowledge about engaging game design, and (most importantly) they generally have around 3-5 years to refine/expand upon/throw out ideas until they have an appealing well-crafted product.
Seriously, as a low key Sonic fan I dream of a day when something like a "Sonic The Hedgehog Returns" by Retro Studios or a "Sonic 3D and Knuckles!" by EAD Tokyo is announce because it'll probably be pretty amazing.


Selling Sonic, Bayonetta, Monkey Ball, and Jet Set Radio to Nintendo would be a good start.

I feel like Sonic, Monkey Ball, and Jet Set (give this one to the "Splatoon team"/EAD2) would fit right into Nintendo's portfolio and software ecosystem..but I'm not sure what they'd gain from buying Bayonetta despite how much I enjoy the second installment.
It's not a very popular franchise and it's not incredibly appealing to Nintendo's key demographic or even the majority of their core fans.

Anyways...as I've said before, suggestions like this seem more like something that would be incredibly beneficial to Nintendo and the specific franchise that they would buy rather than to SEGA as a whole...


Btw, seeing as Mr. Miyamoto wishes he made "Nights Into Dreams" it would probably be a good idea to hypothetically Purchase that IP as well.

:P
 
I really don't know what I'd do as president of Sega. What I'd want to do probably wouldn't be what would work commercially. I think bringing back old franchises to instant success is a pipedream unfortunately. Not enough people care about most of them, it sucks that they don't but its true. I'm too used to seeing the Sega games I loved not selling in high enough numbers.

I'd certainly be tempted to fire the entire marketing department though. Also I don't want to see them owned by Nintendo, why would they even care about most of those franchises? Nintendo owned Sega would just mean the back catalog would be trapped on one companies platform and right now PC is the best bet for their re-release after the success of Valkyria Chronicles.

So the back catalog returning is a pipedream, but you don't want Nintendo to control the IPs in the slimmest of chances the pipedream becomes reality or that PC ports of games you say no one cares about somehow move the needle?

Sounds like a terrible contradiction. Either there is hope or there isn't, pick one and stick with it.

To elaborate more and what I said before I think selling out to Nintendo would be of little benefit to a Sega fan as I don't think the companies are as compatible as many people think. I couldn't see Nintendo making a Yakuza or a Virtua Fighter or anything that suits their arcade heritage. Sonic's the only one who might fit with them and even that's not a sure thing as a lot of Nintendo fans don't like Sonic and like to claim he was never good in the first place.

Not that status quo right now makes things outside of Sonic much more possible but its still more of a chance then if the company was absorbed by Nintendo.
You mean to tell me that the company bankrolling Devil's Third and releasing a game where you kill monsters to feed their hearts to a teenage girl wouldn't release Yakuza or Virtua Fighter? If we are going to talk about Nintendo's supposed incompatibility with certain types of content, it doesn't get much more so than that. They're a company straining to change and doing it slowly. Sega's talent and IPs could simply help hasten that inevitable change. It's not like Nintendo not having that to work with is doing ANYONE any favors, by your own admission.
 
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