Sega: Creative Assembly will return to genres it knows best after Hyenas’ cancellation | It's implied the studio's focus will return to offline RTS

[Gamernyc78]

Sega says Creative Assembly will return to genres it knows best after Hyenas’ cancellation | VGC

It’s implied the studio’s focus will return to offline RTS…

www.videogameschronicle.com

The Japanese publisher announced in September that it was cancelling the multiplayer shooter “and some unannounced titles under development” in Europe, following at least six years of development on the project.

Developer Creative Assembly has suggested the game was cancelled due to “ambitious” plans and high competition in the multiplayer shooter space.

However, during a financial results briefing presentation held this month, Sega Sammy Holdings president and group CEO Haruki Satomi stated that the developer was working on a genre it didn’t know well enough, resulting in the game’s cancellation and a number of redundancies.

“Each studio has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the favorable winds of the early COVID-19 period, coupled with the strong performance of each title, led us to adopt a strategy of accelerating more, even in areas where those studios have not tried yet for further growth,” Satomi said.

“However, some studios did well and some did not, so we have decided to focus again on the strengths of each studio.

“To put it simply, Creative Assembly was good at offline games in the RTS genre, but they took on the challenge of developing Hyenas, an online game in the FPS genre.

“However, although the game itself was good, we decided to cancel the development of Hyenas because we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users when we considered whether we could really operate this as a competitive online game for a long period of time.”

During the Q&A session following the presentation, Satomi was asked about the future structure of Sega’s European studios.

“As part of the process of structural reform centered on Creative Assembly,” he replied, “we intend to optimise the workflow and concentrate their resources on the development of their specialty genres.”

Reports following the game’s cancellation suggested that staff at Creative Assembly were unhappy with its development, with some sources claiming that a lack of direction, disruptive engine change, and overly-cautious design contributed to its downfall.

 

[Snes nes]

If Xbox or a different player goes under then I wonder if sega would take an opportunity to make a new console.

 

[Gamernyc78]

If Xbox or a different player goes under then I wonder if sega would take an opportunity to make a new console.

I doubt they would, even though Sega was actually my main console and turbo gragx 16. It's just too much work and not a guaranteed or enough reward in the end. They can't burn through money like Microsoft either so it'll be too risky for them.

 

[shrike0fth0rns]

If Xbox or a different player goes under then I wonder if sega would take an opportunity to make a new console.

No they aren’t going to do that again. Sega doesn’t have the resources to launch a competitive console in today’s market. It would mean absorbing a huge financial loss upfront, the need for exclusive content, 3rd party support which they won’t get, mindshare which they don’t have enough of. Sega couldn’t even if they wanted to. They don’t have big enough franchises to carry a whole platform. They are struggling as is and they are a few big flops away from putting themselves up for sale. They keep talking sht about being not interested but that never holds up when the money is good enough. My guess is Tencent, Savvy, Nintendo or desperate Microsoft will end up owning sega in the next decade. I don’t see Sony buying them because sega is too weak and unimportant for Sony to care about them anymore.

 

[Snes nes]

No they aren’t going to do that again. Sega doesn’t have the resources to launch a competitive console in today’s market. It would mean absorbing a huge financial loss upfront, the need for exclusive content, 3rd party support which they won’t get, mindshare which they don’t have enough of. Sega couldn’t even if they wanted to. They don’t have big enough franchises to carry a whole platform. They are struggling as is and they are a few big flops away from putting themselves up for sale. They keep talking sht about being not interested but that never holds up when the money is good enough. My guess is Tencent, Savvy, Nintendo or desperate Microsoft will end up owning sega in the next decade. I don’t see Sony buying them because sega is too weak and unimportant for Sony to care about them anymore.

I doubt they would even though Sega was actually my main console and turbo gragx 16. It's just too much work and not a guaranteed or enough reward in the end. They can't burn through money like Microsoft either so it'll be too risky for them.

I agree with most of that but the part where you said they don’t have many franchises isn’t true. They got a lot of games they’ve locked behind a vault. Back in their heyday they had a ton of unique games. But still it’d be quite an investment that would Bankrupt the company (again.)

 

[Nym]

We are putting our teams on projects they are good at

fucking genius fellas

 

[shrike0fth0rns]

I agree with most of that but the part where you said they don’t have many franchises isn’t true. They got a lot of games they’ve locked behind a vault. Back in their heyday they had a ton of unique games. But still it’d be quite an investment that would Bankrupt the company (again.)

I did say they don’t have many franchises m. I said they don’t have many big franchise. Definitely nothing capable of carrying a platform. Sonic is probably their biggest franchises and only does a few million in sales at launch, personas and yakuza are niche and their legacy franchise are just nostalgia fuel. I was a hardcore sega fanboy in the first half of the 90s but almost everything that made them great is gone and what remains is an empty husk and dried up useless ip for the most part

 

[Snes nes]

I did say they don’t have many franchises m. I said they don’t have many big franchise. Definitely nothing capable of carrying a platform. Sonic is probably their biggest franchises and only does a few million in sales at launch, personas and yakuza are niche and their legacy franchise are just nostalgia fuel. I was a hardcore sega fanboy in the first half of the 90s but almost everything that made them great is gone and what remains is an empty husk and dried up useless ip for the most part

Idk they resurrect all that legacy out of nowhere then it’d Make quite the uproar lol. Their strength was always making the most random weird games. Their games werent the highest selling but they did make a lot of their money in the arcades. Sonic is a pretty big seller too. It did do a bit better than ragnorok for a bit lol.

 

[shrike0fth0rns]

Idk they resurrect all that legacy out of nowhere then it’d Make quite the uproar lol. Their strength was always making the most random weird games. Their games werent the highest selling but they did make a lot of their money in the arcades. Sonic is a pretty big seller too. It did do a bit better than ragnorok for a bit lol.

The recent sonic game super stars sega just said this week significantly underperformed. It’s like the 3rd sonic game released in the last yr. Also releasing 3 yakuza game in less than a year and releasing several persona games within a year of each other just goes to show sega is really running out of ideas and the sales reflect that. Sonic frontiers launched on 6 devices and after 6 months on the market had only 3.5 million in sales.

There biggest new most expensive ip that was in development for over a decade was a flop before it was even released and was cancelled. Many of the iconic franchises from the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast days were made by studios that don’t even exist anymore. They have made 6 development studios including mobile and they just had a bunch of layoffs at several. Sega is run by embracer level poor management. I truly will be surprised if they make it another generation. Covid really hurt their decade and gambling business but they bounced back so maybe they can again

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

I doubt they would, even though Sega was actually my main console and turbo gragx 16. It's just too much work and not a guaranteed or enough reward in the end. They can't burn through money like Microsoft either so it'll be too risky for them.

They have to do while there are still Sega fanboys alive!

 

[Would_you_kindly]

If Xbox or a different player goes under then I wonder if sega would take an opportunity to make a new console.

I'd take a Dreamcast mini if they could do one loved the Dreamcast

 

[Snes nes]

The recent sonic game super stars sega just said this week significantly underperformed. It’s like the 3rd sonic game released in the last yr. Also releasing 3 yakuza game in less than a year and releasing several persona games within a year of each other just goes to show sega is really running out of ideas and the sales reflect that. Sonic frontiers launched on 6 devices and after 6 months on the market had only 3.5 million in sales.

There biggest new most expensive ip that was in development for over a decade was a flop before it was even released and was cancelled. Many of the iconic franchises from the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast days were made by studios that don’t even exist anymore. They have made 6 development studios including mobile and they just had a bunch of layoffs at several. Sega is run by embracer level poor management. I truly will be surprised if they make it another generation. Covid really hurt their decade and gambling business but they bounced back so maybe they can again

There does seem to be a lot of licensing issues and internal complications within sega. That hyenas game did look like crap it’s good it was cancelled Would’ve sucked anyways. Idk like persona is widely talked about though. Their weird games. Frontiers was considered successful though. I think the landscapes changes they could bring though would shake up the Way games are made nowadays though. I think segas strategy back then was to just make simple small games and sell Them. I think that worked out well. Comparing it frontiers to nicher Nintendo titles like xenoblade I think the sales of sonic are drastically higher.

 

[On Demand]

I would like Alien Isolation 2.

 

[shrike0fth0rns]

I would like Alien Isolation 2.

Same! Not following up the first game with a sequel was a big mistake.

 

[Yurinka]

Good. Let them make Alien Isolation 2.

 

[Gamernyc78]

Alien isolation 2 with Psvr2 support would be

 

[Would_you_kindly]

Alien isolation 2 with Psvr2 support would be

Fuck that I'd shit myself

 

[Shmunter]

Drop a goddam patch for Alien Isolation you charlatans!

 

[Gamernyc78]

Fuck that I'd shit myself

Yeah the atmosphere and sounds are crazy.

 

[Would_you_kindly]

Yeah the atmosphere and sounds are crazy.

It's that damn xenomorph popping up out of nowhere that gets me like the OG re3 with nemesis