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Putting the mega drive back into Sega: how the company wants to return to creating video game "rock & roll", compared to Nintendo's "pop music"
Eurogamer speaks to Sega president Shuji Utsumi to hear his plans to recapture the essence of what made Sega so spicy compared to Nintendo's safe alternative.
www.eurogamer.net
Interview was done BEFORE the TGAs. The thing he is hinting at was the Virtua Fighter reveal (FUCK YEA).
Sonic's made a comeback in both games and now with the movies, which is symbolic of Sega's resurgence. But you're reinvesting in some of the classic Sega IPs as well, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi...
Utsumi: We made that announcement at the Game Awards [2023]... With the first round [of announcements] I was basically focusing on trying to revive Sonic, Yakuza, and Persona. Three IPs that can be even stronger. And to make Sega more like Sega... Sega has so many great IPs and they've aged very well, and they could appeal to the market again.
Sega always had a fun edge.
Utsumi: Sega had that kind of style [back then]. Sega's position was like, 'If you have attitude, Sega's the company for you, rather than Nintendo', because of the games, because of the style, because of coolness or the kind of attitude. We have such beautiful content value in Sega, and some other IPs, so we're trying to revive it with a little bit of the flavour of hip-hop now.
Interesting. Yakuza games have always felt like the right size. Deep, lots to do, and always a satisfying amount of content, but never too intimidating. I like knowing there's an end. I don't know if I could handle a GTA-sized Yakuza. Do you have any feelings on how the Yakuza series is doing, veering from action to RPG-style mechanics?
Utsumi: We feel the series is expanding. We're trying to have an action base game, and a role-playing game mix of audience. And the [Ryu Ga Gotoku] studio is likely to take a kind of hybrid direction going forward. And theme-wise, the studio keeps its Japanese authenticity, with global appeal.
Is something going to happen there?
Utsumi: I hope so. [Laughs] So regarding the announcement of legacy titles at the past TGA - my people really didn't want to make that happen because it was too early to make an announcement. But I wanted to make the announcement working with Geoff [Keighley], because we're otherwise so dependent on first-party announcements. I want to make our own story, I want to control the message. Now Geoff's presentation is one of the biggest opportunities, other than new platform announcements. So I said, 'Hey, just announcing Shinobi alone is not big news. So we had to package it'.
Well, you certainly made a splash with those reveals.
Utsumi: I wanted to send a message saying 'Sega is coming back'.