Sega, the video game company behind Sonic the Hedgehog and the Yakuza series, has established a new studio in Sapporo, Japan. It's been set up in response to the rapid expansion of the games industry and will be Sega's second development base in the country.
According to the official website, 'Sega Sapporo' is made up of locally hired staff and will mainly focus on designing, developing and debugging game software related to Sega's IP.
Sega Sapporo is led by president and CEO Takaya Segawa, who began his career at Sega in 1992 as a designer, and was previously the chief producer of Phantasy Star Online 2.
Here's a statement from Segawa about the new studio:
"Under the policy of continuing to take on the challenge of creating even more innovative content and providing the world with new and exciting experiences, we will use the know-how that Sega has accumulated over its long history to participate in the development of entertainment that we will present to the world from the attractive city of Sapporo"
Sega Sapporo is now seeking full-time and part-time employees to work across various fields. You can read more over on the official website.
[source sega.co.jp, via gematsu.com, gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 25
To me, the name "SEGA" means four things:
Hopefully a new development studio in Japan will be beneficial to Sega.
I rather see a Sega M2 development studio
Sega have basically been relying on RGG Studio, Sports Interactive and Atlus for a while now. They could do with another proper dev.
If this new studio could help Sega bring back a lot of their old IPs back from the brink of non-existence then that would be nice. Also creating new interesting and fun IPs would be great too.
Still waiting for skies of Arcadia or billy Hatcher getting a sequel/rerelease moreso for skies 😒
Ok. Some good Sega news! Now If Sega doesn’t rush the output, let’s them prototype and iterate, get their bearings as a studio and looks to their excellent and abandoned IP catalog, it could be a slice of that glorious Sega of yore..
But I’m not holding my breath..
I can't think of a more fitting name than *Sega*wa
His surname is literally SEGAwa. Epic!
Very nice. Sega was easily my favorite publisher last gen by a mile. 5 of my favorite games from last gen were all Sega involved in some way so any good Sega news is good news for me!
Until the studio’s output is revealed to be targeting mobile devices exclusively..
Puyo Nights: NFT Online, Apple Arcade exclusive.
@EarthboundBenjy I'm very happy for Puyo Puyo's "resurgence" recently (especially as a couple of crossovers to Tetris, which are arguably the best this gen, in my opinion), but here's hoping Sega can actually shake up the IP a bit.
Please be a studio focused on Dreamcast IP revival! Crazy Taxi Trilogy and Powerstone Collection please! The studio manager should come in on the first day and say, "Hey hey hey, it's time to make some craaaazy money, here we go"!
@EarthboundBenjy
You left out Periscope standardizing quarters in the US.
Good luck sega, hope to see more great IP from them. Been a mess lately.
Why is it so hard for SEGA to bring back fan favorites like Billy Hatcher, Ristar, Crazy Taxi and Skies of Arcadia?
This could be an opportunity to do so.
GO ! SEGA , Wa
Yes hopefuly some revival games and new IP will arrive in the future and maybe that Dreamcast Mini everyone wants.
I am hoping we could see some SEGA ips revivals like Skies of Arcadia, better management and better marketing and more multiplatform releases
F-Zero Switch confirmed?
@EarthboundBenjy I wouldn't call Puyo Puyo extremely safe. One of the reasons I don't play PPT and Champions more (and haven't bought PPT2) is because of the heavy use of Japanese anime voice lines with no options to turn off voices. At least I didn't see options when I bought the games on release. PPT2 also released to people saying "this should've been DLC and priced less".
@Kilroy
Hm, okay. I meant "safe" as in "this doesn't do anything particularly significant to spice up the formula" kind of meaning.
Actually, I'm not so sure about that anymore, because the mashup with Tetris is certainly the most interesting thing that has happened to Puyo ever since the original Puyo Puyo 2.
...Puyo 4's special moves, Puyo Fever's fever mode, and whatever the heck Puyo 7 was going for... they all feel pretty gimmicky. (even though Fever rules can also be a legit competitive game in its own right)
But you're right, in terms of getting the games to sell outside of Japan, maybe Puyo really doesn't do much to try to appeal to non-fans. But the thing is, it doesn't really have to - its Japanese popularity is enough to sustain it.
Maybe they can port some Atlus games to other systems
@EarthboundBenjy I'm sure it does more than well enough in Japan, yeah. Strictly on a gameplay level, PPT is fun as hell and Fusion mode is pretty wild. As someone who hasn't played Puyo Puyo until PPT, it's pretty difficult to get in the mindset of planning out drops, but the chaos makes it great.
@Kayvoo Heck yea on Crazy Taxi!! For Powerstone though we’d have to look to Capcom to bring it back.
Let’s hope this move involves resurrecting some classic SEGA IP as opposed to farming out gems like Panzer Dragoon and House Of the Dead to indie studios!
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