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GameCube (Games) Entertainment Games

Sega Studios To Be Amalgamated In Sammy Merger 43

Posted by simoniker from the sonicsuzukiam2team dept.
jasoncart writes "News from Japan today informs us that the Sega-Sammy merger is progressing apace ahead of the October completion date, with the announcement of new appointments at the holding firm, and news that 'Sega's seven internal divisions, including famous studios such as AM2 and Sonic Team, will be amalgamated ahead of the merger.' Sammy boss Hajime Satomi argues: 'I feel that Sega has high individual capabilities, but it's too separated into different subsidiaries... It's about time that we returned back to the old Sega' - there's also a new company logo for the holding company. At a time of great change for Sega, the only thing now certain is this great shift, with which Sammy aims to push Sega back into profitability."
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Sega Studios To Be Amalgamated In Sammy Merger More

Sega Studios To Be Amalgamated In Sammy Merger

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  • Is it me, or does that logo look ghetto as hell?
  • Well, I like the new logo, and I can only hope that this will lead to better games from Sega. I can't recall the last Sega game I played.

    I remember having some interest in Sonic Heroes, but horrible reviews dropped it to the bottom of my list of games to check out, and I still have yet to bother.

    What else have they produced lately?

    I do have some doubts about how well Sammy will manage Sega.
    • http://gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/914713.asp?q=s o nic%20heroes

      I don't know, 74% doesn't seem that bad to me. I was excited, like you, before the release, and the mediocre reviews have not shied me away from it, although I've yet to pick it up.

      I was appauled at first thought to hear Sega's second parties (or whatever they should be called) will be assimilated. After giving it some thought however, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Games produced by the brightest minds of AM2, Smilebit, Sonic Team, etc.

    • Re:Thoughts on Sega. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BW_Nuprin ( 633386 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2004 @08:33PM (#9310465)
      Rez, Jet Grind Radio, and Skies of Arcadia to name a few phenomenally good, yet underappreciated games.
      • Those were Sega? I thought they just published them. Jet Set Radio was done by SmileBit, IIRC.

        But indeed, Jet Set Radio and Skies of Arcadia were great games. I bought a dreamcast specifically to play Skies of Arcadia, long before it was ported to the gamecube.
        • Yes, Smilebit is the name for one of the development studios at Sega. Hitmaker (Crazy Taxi), United Game Artists (Rez and Space Channel 5), Sonic Team (Sonic the Hedgehog), SmileBit (JSR/F and I believe the Panzer Dragoon series), Amusement Vision (F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball), Sega-AM2 (Shenmue and Virtua Fighter) are all Sega development studios. I believe there are more but I'm not sure of what they are and what they've done, and I think there's been some reorganizing since then.
          • I did not know that. Thanks for the information. I think I'll keep a closer eye on Sega & Sammy now.
          • AFAIK the Sega divisions at the moment are:

            Sega-AM2
            Sonic Team (UGA merged into them)
            Sega Wow (Wow Entertainment and Overworks)
            Smilebit
            Hitmaker (and Sega Rosso)
            Amusment Vision
            Digital Rex (new, headed by Yu Suzuki, now they'll probably never actually release any games)
            Wavemaster (music studio)

            This version was created about a year ago, when Sega had a reorganisation.

            Panzer Dragoon Orta was by Smilebit, but the first three were created by Team Andromeda, which was broken up after the end of the Saturn, but A
      • F-Zero GX, Super Monkeyball, just to add to the list.

    • Re:Thoughts on Sega. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      [At a game development meeting at the new Sammy-Sega]

      Sega exec: Our test results show that the public wants more innovation in the next Sonic game we make. What can we do?

      Sammy exec 1: How about adding levels where the user must change into ball form, and then falls down onto a randomizes grid of pins?

      Sammy exec 2: And the user has no control over Sonic at the time?

      Sammy exec 1: Yes!

      Sammy exec 3: And if he makes it to the exit point, he gets 100 lives right?

      Sammy exec 1: Exactly. and if he fails, the

    • Re:Thoughts on Sega. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Trejkaz ( 615352 )
      Well the Super Monkey Ball series is pretty much incapable of sucking.
  • Not to be offtopic here, but wasn't there a lot more posts than this 5 minutes ago?
  • amalgamate
    v. To mix or alloy with mercury.

    That's right folks! Sega's seven internal divisions will soon be incinerated inside a giant cauldron!
    • Yes. Ignore the relevant definition in favor of the one that doesn't make sense.

      I think most geeks became familiar with the term "amalgam" through the DC/Marvel Comics collaboration [tripod.com] where two characters from their respective companies were combined into one [io.com]. Like Batman + Wolverine = ??? Profit! [geocities.com]

      How would this apply to Sega/Sammy (Segammy)? Maybe they'll release Guilty Gear X vs. Sonic the Hedgehog as a fighter/platform hybrid. We can only hope.

  • Bring Back The Old Sega (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday June 01, 2004 @08:13PM (#9310313) Homepage
    Bringing back the old Sega is fine with me. Let's get a really good Sonic game for the 'cube (or PS2 or anything else). The reviews I saw for the latest Sonic game said that the speed sequences were fantastic, but everythin in between wasn't very good at all. Bring me a game the quality of Sonic 2 or 3. And bring back the Sega attitude. Sega used to be "hip". All their commercials had the "Sega scream", which I liked. When you start to play a game, show the little Sega logo like you used to get on the Genesis where a female voice sings "Sega". Bring them back to who they were.

    Today, Sega doesn't seem like much to me. They make a Sonic game once and a while, and they make sports games. What else do they do? Sure they released Toejam & Earl III (which wasn't supposed to be too hot), or occational House of the Dead sequels, but let's get them making a bunch of games again. They seem to be stuck in sequel-ville with many other parts of the industry.

    If it makes Sega better, I'm all for it.

    But get a better logo. Use the old Sega logo from the 16bit days.

    • Re:Bring Back The Old Sega (MORE) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday June 01, 2004 @08:20PM (#9310357) Homepage
      Sorry to reply to myself but I just remembered this...

      Maybe the reason I can't think of more Sega stuff is the advertising. Sega used to have FANTASTIC advertising. I already mentioned the Sega scream. I remember the commercial for the Game Gear where they had a guy playing a Genesis on a plane and there was a big orange extention cord that went to the ground, and after a second the cord got pulled out of the wall and the guy couldn't play any more. Then they showed the teenager next to him playing Sonic on the Game Gear and talked about how great it was. Then the flight attendant came up with the cart and asked the question that I will never forget: "Coffee? Tea? Water? SEGA!!!".

      And how about those awesome commercials they had for the Saturn. Remember the "Theater of the Eye" commercials? Where they'd show some of the awesome graphics of the system (often Panzer Dragoon, IIRC).

      Maybe Sega could use some help in the brand name department. Make it stronger, like it used to be.

      Also, yes I have played Sonic Advanced 1 and 2 and they were great games, but we need more than that (before anyone mentions them). They also "felt" different than the old school Sonics, but I'm not quite sure how. Starting with just releasing the "four main" Sonic games as a GBA cart would be great (1, 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles). Or release Sonic CD for the GBA. You could compress the music, and the platform is powerfull enough you could do a very good job of it.

      PS: Sonic CD is my all time favorite Sonic game, I think it's the best they ever made. Too bad so many people have never played it.

      • You may have enjoyed the advertising scheme for the launch of the Saturn but it is routinely cited as yet another mistake Sega made at and around the time of the Saturn. Sega's scream commercials had cemented the company into the hearts and minds of teenage boys. The Theatre of the Eye commercials were a bit too avant garde for your typical teenage boy AND they didn't show nearly enough of the games themselves.

        I will note that Sega reverted back to the scream commercials for the Saturn some time after launc

        • Really. I suppose that could be true.

          To me they have always seemed like fantastic ads. They really caught your attention, and if you didn't pay attention the first time you made sure to keep alert for the next time they were on. They showed off some of ther great graphics and peaked your interest in the product. The fact that I still remember them to this day shows the effect that they had on me.

          That said, I can COMPLETELY see the wisdom in including more "traditional" ads. Ones that were just footage of

      • Buy the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA and the Sonic Mega Collection for GCN. I know that the Sonic Mega Collection is a Players' Choice title now because of how popular it is.
    • Maybe they should bring back that weird midi-effeminate-guy-choir that sang, "Se-Ga!" at the start of the games. Now, with support for different sound schemes, we can have that theme song played around the user, circling around until the user gets dizzy ;)
      • They have this on the Sonic Advance games.

        However, if I booted up Monkey Ball 3 and it was all Midi-tastic and said "SE-GA" it'd be awesome.

    • I remember the Sega marketing engine made a small sputter towards the old school Sega commercials (with the SEGA scream) around SegaNet's launch. Couldn't tell you what happened there, but it was at least an attempt to go back to that "old school" marketing trend you've mentioned.

      Sega was hip and did titles that meant something during the Dreamcast era, yet no one bought into it (Space Channel 5, Sea Man, Jet Set Radio, Shen Mue, Typing of the Dead, Rez ((ok...it got a limited Japanese release on DC)) and

      • I remember SegaNet. My cousins had it and I would have KILLED for that. But it was ahead of it's time. Here it is what, 5 or 7 years later and we're only NOW starting to see this with consoles designed to get their games over broadband (often cable) like the Phantom. Or was SegaNet the their "X-Box Live" type idea for the DC?

        Sega did have a bit of a resurgence during the Dreamcast era and did make some fantastic games. I LOVED Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio and Shen Mue; but none of them were commercial

      • Rez also got a release on Dreamcast in Europe. So did Shenmue II.

        Europe does have video games y'know.
        • Yeah, I know. Being an evil, multi-region gamer, I got the European version of Shenmue II when Microsoft decided to have SEGA cancel the U. S. Dreamcast release. It's one of my favorite Dreamcast games. It's an improvement on the original, which I liked, but not nearly as much as part II. I think people who found part I a little slow should give II a chance, it's a lot more fast moving.
    • Sega's produced some fantastic titles in recent years (Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia, the ESPN Sports line, ect.) Indeed, I'd aruge that they're one of the most innovative publishers out there today. The problem, it seems, is that for the most part people don't like games that break the mold. Great example: Jet Set Radio. It was the first game to feature cel shading, was an absolute blast to play, and featured a fantastic soundtrack. What happened to it? It flop
  • Sega and even Sammy's own individual logos looked much more appealing. If I didn't know better I'd guess that it was the logo of some random manufacturer or rice cookers or appliances. Their old logos just had that coolness, and white and blue go with almost anything... Now they're Luigi colored...
    • How are they going to do a monochrome version of this logo? It relies on the two different colors and the gradient to make the actual design.

      A basic rule for design is that a logo should still be recognizable in silhouette.
  • Sega - The Atari of the new millennium
    • So what you're saying is that they will soon be publishing games for every game developer known to man, and becoming something of a monopoly in the game publishing industry?
  • Originally parsed the title as "Sega Studios To Animate Sammy Hagar"...as if that was necessary!
  • Hooray for destroying the different studios within Sega! Hoopefully they got rid of that pesky Smilebit, with their hip attitude and fun games, they might bring shame to Sonic Team!

    I dont see how one studio will be able to keep track of all the different games that the old ones were making. I mean, whether they're in 10 buildings or 1 shouldn't make a difference, but I can bet that they'll get rid of a lot of the redundant positions ("Six producers!? One is enough to make pachinko machines!")

    I'm just bi
  • oh, wait Sammy Merger
  • I don't know what 'amalgamated' means you insensitive clod! Seriously, I don't know and I'm too lazy to look it up on dictionary.com
    • Well, in this case, "amalgamate" means, "Place in a food processor and set to gooify." For usage, here's an example, "The Sammy executives amalgamated the hamsters. The hamsters screamed a lot at first, but soon they were a spreadable red paste."
  • they destroyed the Phantasy Star series with Phantasy Star Online (and its various incarnations).

    If they remade the series from 1-4, they'd probably have huge success with it.

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