Sega To Close Arcades, Cancel Games, Lay Off Employees 66
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.'"
Re:Sega and the decline of Sonic (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
They made the highly lauded and extremely difficult F-zero GX in the GameCube era. They also created Monkey Ball series. As of late, they have released House of the Dead Overkill for the Wii. Coming up they are publishing, The Conduit and Madworld. These are all _extremely_ big games for the Wii.
As for Sonic...he has turned into junk food for little kids...and it shows. Little kids LOVE gimmicks and would be disappointed without one. This is the real Sonic to them no matter what you may think or say. This doesn't mean that Sega might try to make old school gamer fan service games every once in a while. (*Cough* Sonic the Hedgehog reboot on the 360)
I personally think if Ristar had been chosen by luck as Sega's main mascot in history, their 3D tradition would have gone a lot better. His stretching arms are begging for interesting 3D level design. Hell, it should even be a flexible design that could grow well over time. Unlike Sonic, if they created bawl sections or slow puzzle section, there wouldn't be purists screaming "That isn't Ristar!"