The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Henroid]

Buzz just started kicking up on the net about Sega. Confirmed news that they're laying off 300 employees (calling it "voluntary retirement") and are changing their future plans to develop for the PC and mobile markets exclusively.

 

Sega hasn't been a company that thrives in video games for a long time. They've kinda just been doing the whole survive thing. But their money troubles have never gone away and it looks like it's catching up to them.

 

Edit - My first "know more than the average bear" concern in this is Atlus.

[Kolzig]

RIP Sega.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-30-sega-to-offer-300-voluntary-retirement-as-part-of-focus-on-smartphone-and-pc-online-gaming

 

Oh how the mighty have fallen, house of Sonic is in a really deeply troubled state... 

 

It all went down the drain even before Sammy came in.

 

I still wonder how did Sega actually manage to takeover Atlus if Sega itself is in this financial state?

f someone buys off Sega now, some really incredible IPs change owner in such a deal.

 

As a really old times Sega fan, this really just makes me sad and pisses me off that they wasted the fortunes on Mega CD/32X adventures etc.

 

Should've just gone from Mega Drive straight to Saturn and from there to the glorious Dreamcast.

[Henroid]

Atlus' original parent company got nailed by investigation into its financial bullshit. Lotsa fraud and such. So Atlus got traded off or something to Sega. Forget if it was money paid or money already invested that just awarded them ownership.

[JonCole]

Makes me wish Alien did better, as that post cited it only sold 1 million. I don't know how that feels with respect to whatever their spend was on it, but 1 million isn't a high mark for anyone but indies nowadays. That said, I didn't buy it because I'm a horror game baby.

[Dewar]

Unfortunately, Colonial Marines poisoned that well.

[Valorian Endymion]

I am quite worried about this...but some reports suggest that this whole thing is "part of the plan" from a long time (at least something since 2014), because if they are going to focus on pc (which isn´t clear if just online or they meant digital as whole) and mobile, you kind get the signals - lately - for very unknown reasons Sega for the pc, have been investing in strategy, first with Creative Assembly, later Relic and even they bring Valkyria Chronicles to pc. Somehow, either CA or Sega (or both) even got hands on the Warhammer Fantasy IP. You also got this new Total War online game too (also I just remind that they are appear to bring more obscure japanese games to the west on consoles, from what I heard today).... Let´s see how things will unfold, this year they got Persona 5.

 

One other sad news, Joystiq confirmed that will close.

[JonCole]

In other other sad news, former Shacknews/Weekend Confirmed guy Andrew Yoon died in a swimming accident. I only really knew him from the aforementioned activities, but apparently he was just getting into game dev with a completed but not yet released tabletop/card game and some video games in progress.

[feelthedarkness]

In the blighted early days of The Console Warz I was definitely a Genesis person. This is sort of a bummer. 

 

I wonder why they dragged sonics through decades of muck but didn't try to revitalize Streets of Rage, Space Harrier, Phantasy Star (outside of limited appeal soft-MMO) or Shinobi? I know Golden Axe got a shot, but it was pretty weak right? 

[Valorian Endymion]

I was reading gamasutra post on the subject and it shed some light on whats going on:

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/235432/Shakeup_at_Sega_sees_up_to_300_jobs_cut_and_an_office_shuttered.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29

 

Sega Press release (yeah, I got curious and did read this too).

http://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/pdf/release/20150130_segareform_e_final.pdf

 

From the gamasutra post:

At the time the losses were blamed on its Pachinko and Amusement Center Operations divisions; now Sega Sammy expects to ask 120 people take voluntary retirement before the end of the fiscal year in March, predominantly from its Amusement Businesses division.

The other 180 (or more) retirement requests are likely aimed at the West; Sega Sammy plans to "streamline" its Western packaged software division by closing the Sega of America office in San Francisco this summer and relocating its responsibilities to Southern California.

 

Silly question, but just to confirm, by packaged did they mean physical versions? because the press release also mention "packaged", so I guess it really won´t affect digital games.

 

also, from the press release

 

1) restructuring into three business groups , 2) initiatives to drastically improve profitability , and 3) appointment of personnel in charge of structure reform in SEGA, and has developed a structure to enable investment of management resources in growth areas, which include new fields such as Digital Games and Resort Business

 

Wait, Resort Business?! XD great now I kind expect a thematic hotel with either Aliens, Total War, Sonic or Space Marines XD (they clean the your room of heresy with fire, with you still inside).

Edited January 30, 2015 by Valorian Endymion

[feelthedarkness]

good god:

 

and the F2P mobile game Chain Chronicles (which reaped $72M in sales in less than a year.)

[Henroid]

It's actually weird that Sega's pachinko machine business isn't doing so well for them, because it's been their thing for a while as far as constant revenue goes. But I don't know how the culture is like in Japan, when it comes to going out to do things.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Wait, Resort Business?! XD great now I kind expect a thematic hotel with either Aliens, Total War, Sonic or Space Marines XD (they clean the your room of heresy with fire, with you still inside).

 

In Tokyo there's a huge Theme Park-esq arcade called 'joyopolis'. They have rollercoasters, haunted houses, and the best - A huge half pipe ride where you are on a giant skateboard, and you press a lever using your feet as you hit the centre of the pipe. The closer you get to the center when you press it, the higher your score, and the more rotations you do as you go up the other half of the pipe. It's the tits. And of course your plethora of arcade machines too, as well as giant arcade machines, like the jurassic park light gun game, where you're in an actual jeep shooting dinos. you have to press a button to swivel the jeep around 180 to shoot behind you. It's superb.

 

So I imagine they're talking about when they say Resort Buisness?

 

As for pachinko, I'm suprised too. Most of the interest comes from unique anime goods which they can win, which suckers in the otakus to part their money. Maybe there's just not enough interest in SEGA IP's anymore?

 

Also Pachinko Parlours are synonomous with dodgy dealings and Yakuza. My girlfriends sister's boyfriend is a manager at a pachinko parlour, and her mum is so weary of him because she's worried he's involved in 'a bad group of people'. Maybe pros are put off SEGA Pachinko Parlours because they can't get as good a deal as they can from the less reputable pachinko parlours? Maybe just the general interest in pachinko is slowly dwindling?

 

These are all speculations, though. I'm probably wrong about it all.

[Henroid]

Big news breaking on the net. Sony has sold Sony Online Entertainment to an independent firm (for how much isn't known yet), and effective immediately SOE is now known as their former name of "Daybreak Game Company." On top of that, they are going to develop games for multiple platforms, no longer locked-in to Sony products.

 

The huge bonus to this is that all SOE made games / properties continue to be theirs.

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/235560/Sold_by_Sony_SOE_becomes_a_multiplatform_indie_studio_Daybreak.php

 

So yeah. SOE games on Xbox and mobile platforms is very much a possibility.

 

In more solemn news, the animator for Red vs. Blue, Monty Oum, died due to an allergic reaction, which allegedly happened during a routine hospital checkup / accident.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Eurogamer is dropping review scores, which is only a good thing I think. People who are funnier and more talented than me have already mocked it on twitter:

 

[Merus]

It's more interesting, to me, that they're leaving Metacritic.

[Henroid]

We could only hope more outlets decide to leave Metacritic and drop review scores.

[Henroid]

Bethesda has announced that they're going to have a press event at E3 this year, I'm assuming in the same fashion that EA, Ubi, and Activision do. Everyone else though is clamoring for it to be a Fallout 4 announcement. I don't doubt that may be included, but a press event doesn't get organized for just one game. Really, Bethesda has been growing in the industry and this is just a statement of the playing field they're on now as a business.

[Dewar]

So they're going to extend their publishing arm and ruin more games?

[SiN]

I think leaving Metacritic has been a significant motivating factor for every outlet that has dropped review scores, but it's nice to see Eurogamer call it out and detail their reasoning against it very specifically.

[Henroid]

So they're going to extend their publishing arm and ruin more games?

Call me crazy but Big Publisher™ isn't 100% bad for the industry.

[Gormongous]

Call me crazy but Big Publisher™ isn't 100% bad for the industry.

 

I think he means more that Bethesda in particular has a fairly terrible track record for quality control on third-party games they publish.

[elmuerte]

Bethesda has announced that they're going to have a press event at E3 this year, I'm assuming in the same fashion that EA, Ubi, and Activision do. Everyone else though is clamoring for it to be a Fallout 4 announcement. I don't doubt that may be included, but a press event doesn't get organized for just one game. Really, Bethesda has been growing in the industry and this is just a statement of the playing field they're on now as a business.

 

TES With Guns 4 or Fallout With Magic 6 ... either of them will do.

[Dewar]

I think he means more that Bethesda in particular has a fairly terrible track record for quality control on third-party games they publish.

 

Yes, it was a snide comment about this. I could swear I'd heard news before that Bethesda was screwing with people using strange publishing deals, but I can find anything to link. 

[Henroid]

As far as negative outlook on Bethesda goes, the only thing I'm aware of is the terrible engine they use for their premiere titles like The Elder Scrolls. Can't say I've seen anything super terrible said of them aside from that, beyond people getting sad about id Software going into their fold.

[Gormongous]

As far as negative outlook on Bethesda goes, the only thing I'm aware of is the terrible engine they use for their premiere titles like The Elder Scrolls. Can't say I've seen anything super terrible said of them aside from that, beyond people getting sad about id Software going into their fold.

 

Going back to Rogue Warrior in 2009 at least, when they first began their push to be a top-tier third-party publisher, there's a long list of games they've published that have suffered from poor QA and unworkable production schedules. Just glancing over the list on Wikipedia, Wet, Fallout: New Vegas, Brink, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Rage, Doom 3: BFG Edition, The Evil Within, and Prey 2 are all titles that had the aforementioned issues. In the case of New Vegas, at least, the lack of testing caused the developers to lose a bonus promised by Bethesda, which is worrisome. I remember an interview with someone from Splash Damage who specifically said that Bethesda had assumed the responsibility for QA with Brink and then had failed to do virtually any before releasing the game.

 

I guess it's fine for Bethesda to under-test their own games, since they have such an enthusiastic modding community to fix whatever they overlook, but right now they have a pretty terrible record for third-party titles. In the past five years, they've published fifteen games not by Bethesda Game Studios and only Dishonoured and Wolfenstein: The New Order have been free from major issues.