Can Sega be a good company again?

Yeah, this is the first in my new series of rants, and I figure since I review video games, I might as well do a rant about gaming. There are a lot of things in gaming nowadays to rant about, but many of those issues talked about, such as the cancellation of Silent Hills and the downfall of Konami, don’t really affect me that much, but I have a company I could rant about now: Sega. We all know who Sega is, one of the biggest game companies during the 90s, the guys behind the Genesis and the Dreamcast, both really good consoles, and the guys behind Sonic, but over the last decade, they have pretty much been looked at as the butt monkey of gaming companies, and I agree whole-heartedly. Frankly, they deserve the bad reputation they’ve given themselves after the Dreamcast died.

Now, why do I say that? Many, many reasons why. Sega’s problems initially started around the tail end of the fourth generation of gaming. Sega was very successful during this generation with the Genesis proving to be a very worthy rival to the Super Nintendo, giving Nintendo its first real competition ever, as well as making some really good IPs, such as Sonic, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star, Ristar, Toejam and Earl, and many more, for the console, and also bringing several changes to the game industry, such as ending Nintendo’s grip on third-party developers and the creator of the ESRB. They had a nice amount of third-parties, such as Konami, Capcom, Treasure, and EA (I know EA sucks, but still), and they had a very big market share in North America and Europe. However, Sega started running into trouble around the mid-90s, with the failure of the two add-ons for the Genesis, the CD and the 32X. The CD had very few good games on it and was marketed poorly, despite the fact that it sold better than some CD based consoles during the early 90s, such as the 3DO and CD-i (although to be fair, those two consoles were dead on arrival). The 32X was clearly pointless, since not only was the Saturn going to come out a few months after it came out (hell the Saturn had been out in Japan for several weeks before the 32X lauched), but it had no worthwhile games on it and fucked over developers and retailers.

You’d think Sega would learn with the Saturn, but no. You see, for the Saturn’s North America release, they were going to launch it in September 1995, but they moved up the launch because that was the same month the Playstation launched, and Sega moved the launch to May 1995, catching retailers off guard. This lead to many retailers refusing to stock the Saturn (such as EB Toys and Walmart), and developers had no time to make launch titles for the Saturn. It also didn’t help that the Saturn was hard to develop for because of many hardware and graphical issues. Don’t get me wrong, the Saturn did have a few good games for it, like Nights into Dreams, the Panzer Dragoon series, Virtua Fighter, and the definitive version of Mega Man 8, as well as an expanded port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which was only released in Japan and still got beat by the Playstation version by a few hairs), but most developers either refused to make games for it or wanted to, but couldn’t get past its technical limitations. Worse still, Sonic (at that point Sega’s biggest franchise) did not have a true main series game on the console. They were going to have one, Sonic X-Treme, which was going to be the first true 3D Sonic game, but because of development hell, the game was cancelled. By 1997, the Saturn was essentially dead, especially with both the PS1 and Nintendo 64 having high-profile games already out or going to come out, such as Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64), and Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider, and many other games (Playstation).

Because of the massive loss brought onto Sega due to the Saturn, Sega decided to release their last console, the Dreamcast, which managed to salvage some of Sega’s reputation, but in the end failed pretty badly. The Dreamcast came out in 1999, and not only marketed itself much better than the Saturn and being the first console to have a dedicated online service, but it had some of the best games to be on a Sega console, such as Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Start Online, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Shenmue 1 and 2, Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Soul Caliber, and many more. However, the Dreamcast was killed off in 2001, 6 months after the Playstation 2 came out, and many months before the Xbox and Gamecube released. Sega never made another console again and went third-party. For the first two or so years after the Dreamcast, Sega was hemorrhaging money left and right, but they still made some games for the other three sixth generation consoles, whether porting some of their Dreamcast games on the PS2 and Gamecube, or making new games in their series for the Xbox, such as Jet Set Radio Future, Shenmue II (it never got an American port on the Dreamcast, so they had to release it on Xbox instead), Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Blinx the Time Sweeper. However, these games either had negative or lukewarm reception, or they were well received as cult classics but sold very poorly. They also made a couple new IPs on the Gamecube, such as Billy Hatcher and Super Monkey Ball, which I never played and probably don’t really care to play.

As for their main franchise, Sonic, that series started declining around 2004 and 2005, with Sonic Heroes getting mixed reception, and Shadow the Hedgehog being nearly panned by critics and fans. There was initially high expectations that Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was going to be a return to form for the series, but when that game launched, it was unfinished and rushed, with numerous flaws and was overall a slap to the face for fans and critics. And after this game, the series was seen as old hat and nobody wanted to play the games anymore, and Sonic still holds onto this reputation to this day. Granted, there was some small hope that Sonic was going to go back to being good again when games like Unleashed (it had mixed reception, but some fans, myself included, thought it was a decent step in the right direction), Colors and Generations (both being the most well-received Sonic games since the Dreamcast era), but after Generations came out, the series started declining again. Do I even need to mention how much Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric sucked? Sega’s overreliance on Sonic not only caused that series to go downhill, but that combined with Sega neglecting their other franchises, on completely screwing over existing franchises, such as Nights: Journey of Dreams, failing to bring Phantasy Star and other Sega RPGs out of Japan, and ignoring Shenmue III (which is actually going to happen thanks to the kickstarter made by Yu Suzuki and Ys Net), brought Sega the negative reception that they pretty much deserve.

Now, how can Sega redeem themselves? Personally, it doesn’t seem like they’re so fucked that any attempt for them to bring back their good name would be ignored or scorned, but I am a little skeptical if any of this would work. But they are some ways they can get themselves out of the hole they dug themselves into for a long time.

#1 – Take a break from Sonic. Not really discontinue the series, but take a much needed break from the series, maybe for a couple years minimum. Sonic, as well as Sega, has been going downhill because Sega relies on Sonic too much and because of that is why they make an assload of Sonic games every year.

#2 – Bring back some old franchises, such as Jet Set Radio, Nights, Panzer Dragoon, Vectorman, Virtual Fighter, and so on. I didn’t include Shenmue because of Yu Suzuki’s successful kickstarter for Shenmue III (raised over $6 million during its campaign, being one of the most successful kickstarter campaigns ever) and huge fan support for Shenmue III.

#3 – Create new development teams. Many of Sega’s old development teams, such as AM2, Smilebit, and Team Andromeda, either died with the Dreamcast or were laid off. And their most well-known team, Sonic Team, clearly don’t know what they’re doing with the Sonic series anymore, so it makes perfect sense to make new development teams. If they can get their hands on some talented developers, maybe they might be able to make the good games that we deserve once again.

#4 – Bring in some fresh blood. Sega’s executives essentially fucked over the company during the Saturn, and the suits that were brought in during the Dreamcast era couldn’t do much to help the console stay alive. It also doesn’t help that their mismanagement of the company is bringing their image down.

#5 – Reach out to fans and consumers. Now, in all fairness, Sega did do something right recently when the CEO made an official apology to gamers and fans a couple months ago, apologizing for “releasing sub-par games and betraying consumer trust.” About damn time they start admitting that they fucked up, although it’s a little late to be apologizing now. What Sega needs to do is go and ask the customer what they would want from Sega, such as new IPs, old IPs, what could be done to fix the Sonic series, and so on.

#6 – Don’t rush their games. It’s because of Sega having a tendency to rush out their games that they turn out badly, such as Sonic 06 and especially Sonic Boom. And this not only goes for Sega, but to other game companies that rush out their games, namely Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, and others. Hell, even Konami is guilty of this for essentially turning Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes into a $40 tech demo with very little content (seriously, I’ve heard of some gamers who claim to have beaten Ground Zeroes in an short as an hour).

That’s pretty much all I got, but if you have any other suggestions in addition to what I have now, feel free to comment. I really hope it’s not too late for Sega to finally say, “Hey, we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for a long time now and we fucked up pretty hard, so maybe we should do things differently.” Wouldn’t you guys agree? Can Sega save themselves before it’s too late (it probably it, but I digress) or will they end up kicking the bucket and stop existing as a company? Only time will tell.