Couldn't be happier. Sega has always been one of my favorites.
Greenlight Panzer Dragoon Saga 2 before you guys change your mind.
Virtua Fighter is an instant day 1 for me. Literally the only fighting games worth anything in my eyes are Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter. They shouldn't be looking to copy any other fighters honestly. They should be looking at how to make it more 3 dimensional in combat, and make the martial arts more realistic and complex. Most fighters these days fucking suck in comparison. 2D crap. Hold back to block and juggle endlessly with dumb combos.
They should at least move the Panzer Dragoon Saga remake in-house, as they supposedly have the source code. They could expand on it and add additional content, too. A sequel would have to take place during one of the other Panzer games or after Orta, though, story-wise.
If Sega bring back VF they should pattern it after VF3 with the uneven ring surfaces, and also dial up the realism while increasing flashiness in appropriate areas. Maybe they could make Virtua Fighter the 3D fighting game equivalent of Gran Turismo in terms of being a "serious" simulator, only in VF's case for martial arts.
Some obscure fighters like Fighter's Destiny had interesting ideas for modes simulating martial arts tournaments; combine that with VF's physics and realistic simulation (with a decent amount of flashiness) and they could really have something special.
The problem with Sega was never guts, it was sales. People claim they want this but don't buy. Sega was always pushing into uncharted territory and trying crazy shit. People need to back them up.
Sega have had historically bad advertising tho outside of the Genesis/MegaDrive era and early part of the Dreamcast era. At least for Western territories.
I like that Sega’s doing what looks to be AA games. Leave the blockbuster budgets to the bigger publishers, and just focus on making attractive games with solid mechanics.
Pretty much like Nintendo.
Games like TOTK are AAA. They may not cost as much to make as HFW or GOW Ragnarok, or even stuff like that upcoming Blade game, but they are definitely not AA games.
They generally have more resources and funding available to them than vast majority of AA titles, and the level of dev talent they have is comparable to AAA devs like Rockstar or SSM.
Sega reinvesting in the franchises that killed them in the first place.
Bold strategy.
These franchises didn't kill Sega. Bad management and accounting practices of their finances killed them. You don't flood a market with millions of consoles for Christmas season that go unsold, that you then have to buy back, and do nonconsolidated accounting to hide the numbers until it's too late. That would screw up any company; I'm surprised Sega never got sued by shareholders over it TBH.
The other problem was poor advertising. Sega marketed their brand more than their games, unless the game was Sonic. It got especially bad in the Saturn era, to the point they'd even tease would-be customers not able to buy games due to limited print runs (Panzer Dragoon Saga face cut-out advert in gaming magazines).
If anything, them not continuing IP like Streets of Rage on the Saturn (or paying companies to advertise in Crazy Taxi) are what screwed them over with a lot of their core fans. Or other boneheaded decisions like pissing off retailers so they refused to carry Saturn systems altogether.