Sega's president and COO, Shuji Utsumi, has stated his wish for the company's revival to be the "greatest achievement" in his career.
During an interview with The Game Business, Utsumi, who produced the business plan for Sony's first PlayStation before overseeing first-party development for the Dreamcast, brushed off his previous achievements with a view to focus on the future.
One way in which he hopes to achieve this is to change the mindset for Sega's Japanese studios. When he rejoined the company, the teams over in Japan primarily focused on domestic audiences, and neglected to pay much attention to international fans. This has now changed, with Utsumi stating that the company's attitude now is to say: "Hey, all the gamers in the world are our audience".
That said, Utsumi is concerned about the console market in the face of growing competition from PC and mobile, but is nevertheless a fan of traditional consoles:
“Since I was a member of the PlayStation launch team, I have a big attachment to the console business. And Nintendo has been playing an amazing role… Jesus, they made a great contribution to this area. I didn’t expect Switch 1 to be that successful. Nobody did. But the big huge trend is PC, with its global market reach, and mobile, of course, which is getting better and better in terms of graphics.”
“Sometimes you want to play in different styles. Sometimes you want to relax and play in the living room with the big screen. That’s one way. Sometimes you want to kill time on some mobile games. And a PC game… it’s sitting in front of a desk, doing something more serious. There are lots of ways to enjoy games, and among all those activities, I want to believe the console is going to give us very nice opportunities.”
When responding to a comment regarding the tough environment within the industry at the moment, Utsumi decided to look upon the situation in a more positive light:
“I was with the music industry for a while. The music industry is tough. The movie industry is tough. But if you look at the video game industry, the base is still expanding. So, while it's getting tougher, maybe for console, the game business overall is still growing. There is opportunity to reach more and more people. I am optimistic about it.”
Time will tell if Utsumi manages to achieve his goal, but Sega has certainly been on a bit of a roll recently. The company launched three games on day one with the Switch 2, with more in the works, and it's been seeing remarkable success with the Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise.
Fans of old-school Sega can also look forward to revivals of Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe, and more in the coming years.