The Survival of SEGA
SEGA lives ... But I wish they hadn't
Continuing our short series of articles titled “Why we might have got things a bit wrong, sorry, but here’s what’s changed, please forgive us” we would like to review our opinion on Sega.
In the original article, we spoke about the end of Sega and, in a sense, we were right. They are no longer Sega Corp. but Sega Sammy Holdings, supported by an enormous well of money. So, like Atari, Sega’s brand name was the only thing that survived; many of its developers walked in protest of the new arrangements. But Sega lives on, and after a period of uncertainty, it appears to be doing rather well, at least in business terms.
After the disaster of the Dreamcast, Sega’s only chance of survival was to concentrate on software and they became a publishing company, rather like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft. In addition to continuing with their dominance of the arcade machine market, there followed an aggressive reconfiguration of their business with an emphasis on diversifying their titles to include games that would guarantee easy revenue. Sega started to favour bland sports games over the brilliantly ambitious titles such as Jet Grind Radio or Shenmue of Sega’s past. Sega also started to court the attention of Western companies and started to publish games such as Football Manager.
This, combined with the continual flogging of a dead hedgehog, saved Sega and they started to enjoy higher earnings. Despite the appearance of utter abominations like ‘Shadow the Hedgehog’ the more optimistic Sega fans amongst us whispered about old Sega favourites being resurrected for the next generation consoles. Perhaps, some whispered, there might be a new Shenmue game? Sega did indeed release some ‘old’ classics but neglected to make them any good which just goes to show you should be careful for what you wish for.
Nonetheless, it has proved to be a highly profitable strategy for Sega; repackaging old titles for mobile and handheld gaming has enabled Sega to cut their costs massively and they have pumped out titles without having to invest money in new, risky (and potentially exciting projects). The truth is that they ‘hire out’ a lot of their intellectual property to developers who create diluted versions of old favourites with none of the verve or style of ‘old’ Sega. For example, I remember buying Sonic Rush for the DS a couple of years ago and was horrified at how someone could have taken a perfect formula and ruined it with such precision. Where was the fun? Where was the joy?
But this is just symptomatic of a business that lost virtually of the staff that helped Sega earn its reputation in the first place. And Sega, it seems, is succeeding as a business but are close to losing their soul. As a manufacturer of high quality video games they bear no resemblance of the company that I once admired. Sega of old is dead.
