Has Sega' 'Big Announcement' been made yet?

Zhane

cos i aint seen anything about it

honru

They're co-publishing The Matrix Online.

That's it.

monument

...

Zhane

is that it?:dunno:

honru

If internet discussions are anything to go by then yeah. Dissapointing. Hopefully this isn't it; there's still one day left of E3 and they could whip out a surprise then.

Stephen

Lame.

sega, suck my balls.

L5

Could be phantasy star 3 which was announced either...
Either ways, it was blown way out of proportion.

i_am_dogboy

maybe they'll remind us that they made the mega drive or something.........better than hearing about matrix online anyway

teck-x5

urg sucks monkey balls tbh !!!! come on sega dont let us down.


Digital rex have still to announce their new games, and hopefully shenmue 3 is one ove them

tHE vAGGABOND

given the success of that crap matrix game last year, I think that matrix online game could do well - if it were done properly (ala not buggy and crap for the first 18 months of its life like star wars galaxies) it could do very very well, let alone be great fun to play

anyway, sega rock - esp. their forthcoming range of sports management games

secret_squirrel

Actually the big announcement was today - its a MMOPG version of Phantasy Star Online.

I was half right here

You may all praise me now

The Real B-man

cant expect much from sega there day has gone

monument

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
You may all praise me now

The "big announcement" in this context is the 'big E3 announcement'. E3 is over, for the year.

elmer

would it not be the sammy merger?

l3rian

well they were right in that i never expected the announcement to be completely rubbish

BLITZ_Molloy

Well they announced after E3 that Sammy had bought the remaining 78% of stock.

eurogamer wrote:

Japanese game publisher and gambling machine manufacturer Sammy Corp has announced that it is to acquire the remaining 78 per cent of Sega's stock which it doesn't already own, in a deal worth 165 billion Yen (1.2 billion Euro).

The news follows months of intense speculation over the intentions of Sammy president Hajime Satomi, who had indicated that a number of different options were being considered regarding the future relationship of the two companies after Sammy bought a 22 per cent stake in Sega last December.

Under the terms of the arrangement, Satomi will head up a new holding company which will effect a merger of Sega and Sammy in October by buying up all the shares in both companies - with Sega shareholders being given 0.28 shares in the new company for each share they own, while Sammy shares will be exchanged one for one.

In effect, this completes the merger deal between the two companies which was originally proposed in early 2003 - but was eventually rejected by Sega in an acrimonious and highly public debacle which led to the resignation of several of the publisher's senior executives.

The news of the complete take-over comes after Sega announced that its net income for the year to March 31st had more than doubled, with 8.8 billion Yen (64.5 million Euro) of income recorded, largely due to the continuing upswing in the company's arcade machine business.

Crucially, the loss in the company's home console operations narrowed massively - with a loss of 2.8 billion Yen (20.5 million Euro) recorded, down from 8.6 billion Yen (63 million Euro) last year.

Satomi-san, who will be president of the new merged company, has previously expressed his desire to see Sega focusing increasingly on the arcade market, and hopes to use the company's development talent and wealth of intellectual property to build on the success of Sammy's low-cost Atomiswave arcade system.

The Sega acquisition will also give Sammy a strong base from which to build its overseas operations. The company is currently largely focused on the domestic Japanese market, where it is the single largest supplier of the popular "pachinko" gambling machines found in arcades all around the country.

Sega need move back into arcades. It's the part of the business thats made them healthy profits for the last 3 years.

Sega's creative people + Sammy's business sense = win.

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by BLITZ_Molloy

Sega need move back into arcades. It's the part of the business thats made them healthy profits for the last 3 years.

Yea but surely if Sega-sammy concentrate on arcades its basically its death as a true multinational? Last time I looked arcades were dead outside of Japan?

griffdaddy

i thought the big announcemeny was that new control pad console thing that has loads of megradrive games built in? you know the pads that plug straight into the tv?

monument

Originally posted by f®eak s©enery
They're co-publishing The Matrix Online.

That's it.

^
That's it. That's the 'big announcement'.

Source: Going up and asking a Sega employee at the Sega stand, then asking them are they sure. Can some one tell me if they were wrong?

Its one of the biggest anti climaxes of all time. I was hoping to hear that Shenmue 3 was nearing completion in time for a christmas release.:D

Source: Going up and asking a Sega employee at the Sega stand, then asking them are they sure. Can some one tell me if they were wrong?

Monument is the Irish Stephen Glass.:D

BLITZ_Molloy

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
Yea but surely if Sega-sammy concentrate on arcades its basically its death as a true multinational? Last time I looked arcades were dead outside of Japan?

They're doing very well in Asia and South America too. Sammy have saturated the Japanese market at this stage. They're looking to expand amusments (gambling and gaming) overseas, primarily in 3rd world countries. Their aim is to have the Atomiswave so cheap the operator can make his money back quickly on as little as 10c per play.

And that's the issue really. Console gaming didn't kill arcade gaming. Arcade gaming commited suicide. The economics blew up on them so the cabinets started costing $15m to engineer and the operators and players got bad value for money.

The UK and Irish market could recover quite quickly if Sega/Sammy go about it right. I have an interview with the head of Sammy Europe on my website.

"I say: 'Why can't we go to Sansbury's?' I don't see videogames in there. You go to the store and they may have kiddie rides, but I don't see videogames there. I don't see videogames anywhere outside of the traditional arcades in England and there are opportunities. There are pizza chains, there are retail chains and that's what we want to break into."

http://molloy.kirkwarez.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12

secret_squirrel

ok the way I see it we have 4 possibilities that the sega marketing droids might have thought was worth the 'Big E3 Announcement' tag. Especially if you consider the fact that just because they decided it was gonna be at E3 doesnt mean they could have later decided to postpone it by a week.

1. PSO MMORPG
2. Matrix Online
3. Sammy Buyout/arcade frenzy
4. New 'Console' (5 games in a joystick)

Personally I think it was the merger - especially since Sammy dont seem to give a damn about sega's history in the home games market.

Their next big realease? Pachinko Outrun. (aka death of sega as we know it)

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by BLITZ_Molloy
The UK and Irish market could recover quite quickly if Sega/Sammy go about it right. I have an interview with the head of Sammy Europe on my website.

Sorry I dont buy that at all. Nowhere in the western world are arcade games anything more than a passing fad - hell they were more about having a crafty smoke even when I were a lad.

The Playstation generation killed off arcades far more than expensive games. Sega/sammy will just be a niche player confined to the far east, (albeit a bloody big niche)

BLITZ_Molloy

Arcades are huge in Brazil and Mexico as well. The conditions just have to be right. Games costing a pound for 4 and a half minutes of play is what killed the arcade market. Who the **** would pay that?

Here are the wise words of Nolan Bushnell:

"I don't believe the arcade was killed by the consumer market. I believe the arcade business commited suicide. And they commited suicide by forgetting who they were. What happened was the arcade thought they were in competition with home, when in reality they weren't. The arcade industry didn't understand that there is an out-of-home experience and an in-home experience - and their quite different - and the arcade business killed itself becasue the economics blew up on them, and it blew up on them because they felt that they had to do bigger-faster-better. So as a result they were trying for more MIPs than you could get from a home console game, more polygons, etc., and this meant that the hardware that the coin-operated game business was using was constantly moving so there were no economies of scale., and so all of a sudden you had coin-operated games with engineering budgets of 5 and 10 million dollars. Well the arcade business isn't big enough to pay for all that engineering. So what happened was there was a huge price escalation, and pretty soon instead of costing two or three thousand dollars arcade machines were costing 10 or 15 thousand dollars"

OK, I'll summarise a bit to save on typing:

To pay back for all the enginnering they need to charge a pound or two per play. That's alot of inflation and for 4 and a half minutes thats very high-cost entertainment. They ended up pricing themselves out of the market on the one hand but on the other hand they did something even worse. Higher costs lead to higher risk leads to less innovation. And risky things aren't tried. And risks are where you get the new invigorating product that drives the market. The result is all you get is driving and lightgun games. Who could get excited about that?

"I believe that games need to be different in public places. That is, a lot of games that you play at home require enormous amounts of concentration, and to have that concentration in a situation where someones talking in your left ear and drinking beer in your right ear isn't very fun. So if you try to do home-style games in a bar, it will fail. Or even home style games in a noisy arcade, its not a satisfying experience. One thing that the public places have that the home doesn't is groups of people who want to compete with each other so that games become a social experience. And so thats what I'm doing. I'm building a series of games that create social structures within bars, restaurants and arcades."

"Because you want to enfranchise the least capable of the group while keeping the most capable of the group in terms of gameplay, challenged and having fun. And you want to take the dynamic a little bit off the game and on to the socialisation thats going on."

"And there shouldn't be any violent content. You don't do that for prudish reasons. It's just because if you lose the female portion of the population. And, in bars or restaurants, if you lose the females, you've lost the males too."

Sammy didn't pay a couple of billion to get Sonic the Hedgehog branding for their pachinko machines. The market for the things is saturated and there would be little point in dissolving Sega except to get a hold of some of their retail locations. Which aren't worth that kind of money. They're in it for the games and nothing else.

Sammy aren't suggesting Sega leave console gaming either. Half of Segas games never make a profit. Half of them never leave Japan. These are some serious issues that need to be sorted.

Sega have been making oodles of cash in the arcades in the last few years yet it only comprises 5% of their resources. They should be going 60% arcade and 40% console.

As far as I'm concerned all of Sega's best games recently (Virtua Fighter 4, FZero, Outrun 2, Initial D and Virtua Cop 3) have been coinops so they should be making more of the bloody things. The likes of Rez, Space Channel 5, Samba De Amigo and Jet Set Radio are just the kind of thing that works well in an arcade too. Those kind of games just bomb on consoles because you can't market them. In the arcade people just pop in a coin and try it. Problem was they couldn't do strange new concepts because of the engineering budgets. With the Atomiswave they can knock out a game like that and not worry abou the cost or how many units it sells.

Console gaming from now on is all about FMV, realism, violence, urban culture blah, blah, blah. It's just not Sega's strong point. They're too quirky. What should be happening is they make arcade games and then port over the really successful ones. Thats the sort of pedigree the Mega Drive had and whats been successful for them in the past.

monument

Originally posted by Darko
Monument is the Irish Stephen Glass.:D

As in, the ‘New Republic’ Associate Editor Stephen Glass who was fired for fabricating stories? If so, you should have used Jayson Blair as an example, he's more in vogue.

(BTW I recall telling you about Ireland’s libel laws)

If so, you should have used Jayson Blair as an example, he's more in vogue.

Well the release of Shattered Glass has ment that Stephen Glass has forced Jayson Blair into the background.

Just try and sue.

honru

Anyone think that this new aquisition sucks? I mean, Sammy are a pachinko company. Apart from picking up the Guilty Gear series they don't no squat about making good games, and are now calling the shots. Who knows what'll happen to the games division.

BLITZ_Molloy

Sammy have been making games since the 80's. They don't release many but some are very good indeed. Viewpoint would be one example. The Rumble Fish is another next gen 2d fighter they put out this year with a pretty unique look. I'm not sure how it plays yet though.

They did a very cool puzzle game last year called Sushi Bar. I played it in Play 2 Win in London. Here's a vid:

http://www.insertcredit.com/features/london2003/sammy/sushibar2.avi

monument

Originally posted by Darko
Just try and sue.

If I were to, the judge would just love that.

Could you please discontinue posting slanderous comments, or comparisons, about me here, at least until you can back them up. And, anyway, I would think you’re going off-topic.

If I were to, the judge would just love that.
Could you please discontinue posting slanderous comments, or comparisons, about me here, at least until you can back them up. And, anyway, I would think you’re going off-topic.

I guess I should apologise. Stephen Glass is supposed to be an intelligant human being who is in reality a rather nice person. Monument is neither of the above. So my deepest apologies to Stephen Glass.

monument

Originally posted by Darko
I guess I should apologise. Stephen Glass is supposed to be an intelligant human being who is in reality a rather nice person. Monument is neither of the above. So my deepest apologies to Stephen Glass.

Banned.