Sega To Close Arcades, Cancel Games, Lay Off Employees

slugo writes with this excerpt from Wired: "The house that Sonic built is getting significantly smaller. Sega's Japanese main branch said Tuesday that it will close 110 arcades, cancel some games in development and seek to lay off 18 percent of its staff. ... Sega says it will chop 20 percent off its research-and-development budget for arcade and consumer games. The company plans to do this by 'consolidating titles to be developed' and 'enhancing the self-manufacture ratio.'"

Maybe you SHOULD care

[Moraelin]

Who knew....

er. cared. arcades died in the 90's.

Maybe you should care about this, because they're also firing 20% of the R&D stuff "for arcade and consumer titles". But even that's a bit redundant, because most of their titles were developed for both. Most of Sega's own games were really arcade games.

So, sure, in the very short term they can probably live a year or two off just porting their existing arcade games to every platform out there. But in the long run I can't help feeling that Sega is making itself less and less relevant. They're hardly making games any more. They're making more and more ports and emulations of games they made 10 years ago, with the occasional rehash, remake or sequel thrown in.

How long _can_ they live off innovation and good ideas they had in the 90's?

At any rate, even without caring about Sega or its arcades per se, it's yet another step towards less original stuff in the games market. Yet another company is getting firmer and firmer set into making just ports and sequels. (Mind you, in Sega's case it had started going that way already, but this is another step down that road.) Now I'm not going to go in panic over it or anything, but it's hardly reason to be flippant about it either.

Publisher

[Moraelin]

Well, they were already a publisher too, which pretty much _is_ outsourcing. I guess they'll just stick to more of that from now on.

Sega and the decline of Sonic

[religious freak]

Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned they killed Sonic when they turned him into a monstrous, slow werewolf and killed everything that made Sonic good. Why should I have to play a slow, sub-par action game to get to the good, fast Sonic levels?

What else do these guys even make? It's kind of a shame to see them in such shape since they were a pioneer, but they need to make better decisions.

Re:Sega and the decline of Sonic

[epistemiclife]

Actually, Sega makes a a significant number of excellent titles which no one buys, especially in America. It just so happens that Sonic Team's games sell well because they have the most mass-market appeal. Recently examples of others include the four Yakuza games, Valkyria Chronicles (the best game I've played in several years), Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Tennis 3, and Outrun 2006. Since you mentioned Sonic, very few people are complaining about the excellent Sonic Rush games. Most of the games that people complain about not games developed by Sega of Japan, but games merely published by Sega. And to be fair, Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. The werehog levels are not action levels; they're platforming levels. People complain that it's slow, but they only complain that it's slow because it's a Sonic game. If it had been any other slow platforming character, like all of the others, no one would have been outraged, even if they had disliked the gameplay. I think that including the levels was a bad decision, but I don't think how some evaluated it is very even-handed. Sonic games are aimed primarily towards kids, and they seem to like Sonic Unleashed, overall.

Re:Sega and the decline of Sonic

[mog007]

Didn't Sega re-release their old Sonic games for the Genesis a few days ago for the PS3 and 360? I'm all for nostalgia, but come on guys, you already released that sort of collection during the last console generation. Maybe they're going broke because they're out of ideas and they're trying the EA approach: make the same thing year in and year out.