Sega shuts down in Europe and Australia – Video Games Update
Sega claims that it is going to focus on digital distribution as it shuts down its offices in Europe and Australia. This comes right after the news that Sega of America was having financial troubles and had to lay off most of their staff.
Because of all the layoffs Sega will now only be focusing on just four of its Intellectual Properties (IPs) for releases in America and Europe while scraping a lot others or putting them on permanent hiatus. The IPs’ that are still on the table consist of
Football Manager, the Total War series, the Aliens series and of course games featuring Sega’s own mascot Sonic the Hedgehog.
This news came as a shock to many gamers who were eagerly awaiting and hoping that Sega would announce a sequel to Bayonetta, an over the top action Hack’n’Slash game developed by Platinum games, the studio which consists of the team responsible for the
old Devil May Cry games by Capcom.
Other notable games that also won’t see the light of day in the West as a result of this news include a sequel to Vanquish, which was also developed by Platinum Games for Sega and is Platinum’s take on the Gears of War like cover based shooters.
This news might also mean that Sega might stop localising some of its Japanese games such as the popular and critically acclaimed Yakuza series, the Valkyria Chronicles Games and Shinobi for Sony’s Playstation consoles. This will be a blow to Playstation
gamers in the West.
Sega limiting itself to just four IPs in the West means that fans will not be getting sequels for any of the Nintendo Wii exclusive games that were published by Sega such as Mad World and the Conduit. This also marks the end of the Virtua Fighter brand in
the West.
Sega has not commented on the HD release of Jet Set Radio, which was reported to have been in development. Sega claims that they will still be pushing 50 to 75 titles a year through digital distribution apart from the four ‘Core’ IPs.
Sega seems to be moving towards casual gaming as stated by Jurgen Post, the CEO of Sega Europe, “It's still a fantastic business, because if you combine everything it's massive and it's growing. But we had to make the changes we are making right now, in
order to be better prepared for the future."
It will be interesting to see how Sega manages to restructure their business as many fans are eagerly aniticipating to see some interesting titles from them.
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