THQ and Sega team up for retail event

[funcroc]

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/26683/THQ-and-Se...or-retail-event

 

THQ and Sega team up for retail event

15:30, Apr 20th 2007

Publishers plot retail-focused show to fill the gap left by E3.

 

No

[Musopticon?]

Why isn't anyone else interested?

 

Likely DoW 2, possibly Obsidian's new rpg and a wealth of other interesting games.

[metadigital]

I heard that SEGA and Obsidian are making a new RPG from the Alien franchise.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Is it not a bit early for that?

 

As an aside, has SEGA published any other RPGs or adventures that I might have heard of? What's their main thing?

[metadigital]

[Tale]

Is it not a bit early for that?

 

As an aside, has SEGA published any other RPGs or adventures that I might have heard of? What's their main thing?

Phantasy Star?

 

Main thing? Sonic and related characters. Virtua Fighter, a variety of games prefixed with Virtua. I actually don't think they have a main thing, they're pretty varied.

[Xard]

Awesome news, hopefully we learn something about Obsidians third project.

[Musopticon?]

I wish to see news about MTW 2:Kingdoms as well.

[ryan@seganerds]

As an aside, has SEGA published any other RPGs or adventures that I might have heard of? What's their main thing?

 

Sega have pretty much only been a Japanese company up until the left hardware so you wont have heard of much if you didn't play Sega consoles.

 

Some of there more epic RPGs games are 'Shenmue' 'Panzer Dragoon Saga' 'Phantasy Star IV' 'Skies of Arcadia' 'Shining Force' 'Dragon Force' 'mystaria' and 'Beyond Oasis'

 

Other games you might know, Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon series, REZ, NiGHTS into Dreams, Guilty Gear series, Streets of Rage series, Virtua-On, Yakuza, Virtua Fighter, OutRun, Sega Rally, Total War series, Football Manager Series, Burning Rangers, Golden Axe, Ecco, Shinobi..

 

The list goes on and on tbh. Sega probably have more discontinued hits then most other games companies have games. Despite being the underdog and usually only a cult following in the past your going to start hearing more about Sega in a big way now they have got there act together.

 

Up coming Sega PC games:

[PC]

- Universe At War: Earth Assault

- Sega Rally

- Aliens RPG

- Aliens FPS

- Storm Chaser [rumored]

- Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms Expansion

- Shenmue Online

- Beijing 2008

- Football Manager Live/mmo

- Iron Man - Hulk - Cap America - Thor

- Typing of the Dead 2

- Sega Splash Golf

 

p.s I co-run a Sega fan site, www.seganerds.com

[Leferd]

Thanks Seganerd! That was an informative post. I had the Sega Genesis years ago (and I actually still have it) and it is my favorite gaming platform behind the PC. I've always been impressed by their quality of products, ranging from Sonic and Golden Axe, to Football manager and their (now defunct) series of ESPN sports titles (of which they are now branded 2K with their transfer to Take 2). Some of my favorite video games came from the Genesis (NHL 93-95, Tony LaRussa Baseball, Madden 93-96, FIFA 94-95 all from EA). Definitely looking forward to Obsidian's projects as well as the continuation of the Total War series.

 

Admittedly, my experience with Sega has been limited as of late, but as a publisher, they haven't been skimping on the packaging. I've been impressed with the way (atleast here in N. America) they included thick manuals, maps, soundtracks, and other goodies with their initial retail releases of the Total War series. Is that the normal on their part? What's their financial outlook? Are they in dire straits, such is the case with Atari? Are they supportive of their third party developers -in terms of being generous, or atleast reasonable, with giving them enough time to develop quality and polished products?

 

Since you're running a fansite for them, perhaps you know a little more about that than the forum regulars here.

[ryan@seganerds]

Nice to see there's at least some Sega fans here to, They very often do nice extras with there games sometimes going as far as packing weird items for an example the PS2 remake of Panzer Dragoon you could get a little music box with it that played the theme tune. Very often they have nice stuff packed in. The downside is that their manuals are in black and white bar the cover and back.

 

 

Financually they are sound, After they left the hardware business they when almost bankrupt and hovered there for quite some time, they finally got back in the black around 04 and then merged with a company called Sammy. Now there in the money in fact they are one of if not the 'richest' publisher in Japan.

 

Finally I'm most 'proud' of Sega for the way they treat there 3rd party devs, and even there second. Sega generally don't set deadlines and just let the developers get on with it. They may set a deadline but it will be of a few years and if the game isn't finished by then I doubt they would still push it out but just delay it instead. They also treat there second party's very well, take 'prope' and 'Arc' they are funded by Sega and Sega owns the controlling share of them but they are pretty much free to do what ever they like so long as Sega gets first dibs on publishing the games they develop. If for what ever reason Sega doesn't want to publish the game they are then free to get another publisher out side of Sega.

[Leferd]

Cool. That sounds very promising.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

No more e3?!

 

What is wrong with the world these days?!

[Xard]

E3 is dead and buried which is only good thing.

[Musopticon?]

It was a glorified buttlick fest for anyone capable to get a ticket, almost totally divergent from the original idea of a press event about how cool games are.

[Fenghuang]

Financually they are sound, After they left the hardware business they when almost bankrupt and hovered there for quite some time, they finally got back in the black around 04 and then merged with a company called Sammy. Now there in the money in fact they are one of if not the 'richest' publisher in Japan.

 

 

Uh...no.

 

Sammy gained control of Sega in a hostile takeover after merger negotiations fell apart. The restructuring that followed was more devastating to Sega than the near bankruptcy and their withdrawal from the console market. Sega is all but dead in all but name now.

 

Link to really long but interesting article about the death of Sega.

[ryan@seganerds]

It may have been a take over but in the end they Merged the 2 companies with a holding company SegaSammy Holdings, Sega and Sammy work as two different companies.

 

That article exaturated things a lot, For example, generally Sega still make a lot of great games Its really only 'Sonic Team' the guys who make Sonic and a few others that have really gone off the deep end and I would love them to be disbanded.

 

Sega is all but dead in all but name now.

I couldnt disagree more, As long as pretty much all of the original Sega team from before the merge are still around Sega are still around to. Despite a couple of the good guys walking out after Sammy messed Sega around most of them like Suzuki, Naka and Kodama are still around.

 

Your right that Sega took a blow when they 'merged' with Sammy but its also a good thing because Sammy are rolling in money. Despite Sonic being totally trash they have some awesome games in development now they have started to find there feet again and are making good moves like working with great western developers such as Obsidian.

[SteveThaiBinh]

There's an article over at Gamespot about SEGA's new Marvel-related games. It may be a different company from before, but it doesn't seem to be short of projects or lucrative franchises.

[metadigital]

Sounds like Atari ... "

[ryan@seganerds]

Then you must be deaf

 

Atari are a completey different company then what they where when they had consoles bar the name. Sega has pretty much the exact same workforce as they did in hardware bar 1 or 2 people who left in the merge. Atari are useless now and Sega are going places.

[Xard]

Man, I love fanboyism <3

[Musopticon?]

You said it, bud.

[ryan@seganerds]

I could have said the same thing when people were naming Obsidian as the number 1 RPG developer when all they have made so far are 2 mediocre RPGs. But I let it side. Lets hope they can get there act together for Aliens and beyond.

 

All I've said is plan old facts.

[Xard]

I could have said the same thing when people were naming Obsidian as the number 1 RPG developer when all they have made so far are 2 mediocre RPGs. But I let it side. Lets hope they can get there act together for Aliens and beyond.

 

All I've said is plan old facts.

 

2 "mediocre" RPG's?

 

KotOR 2 = without being rushed this would've been at least good as original one.

 

NWN2 = Despite it's problems there's no way this could be "mediocre". For generic "let's beat this ultramegabadguy" narrative was damn good, character were interesting (HUGE props for Khelgar, Sand and Ammon Jerro. Shandra also is one of the few characters in games who feels like real person), combat system is awesome (well d'oh, it's DnD so this really isn't OE's merit) and although fights were mostly bit easy in OC they were fun mostly. New UI is ten times better than horrible Radiant Menus of NWN1. Oh, and The Trial. Especially The Trial.

 

It has it's downsides too. Technical problems, too railroaded from time to time, multiplayer problems, AI problems, stupid death rules (which exist because of the nature of campaign), but AI, multiplayer and technical problems (and other sort of tweaks) are handed all the time by patches. In last patch we finally got multi-selecting, yay!

 

Both games have their short-comings, but mediocre?

[Tale]

I could have said the same thing when people were naming Obsidian as the number 1 RPG developer when all they have made so far are 2 mediocre RPGs. But I let it side. Lets hope they can get there act together for Aliens and beyond.

 

All I've said is plan old facts.

There are no other RPG developers. Bethesda is making action RPGs. Bioware is making action RPGs. Their last RPG was 4 years ago with all of their current/recent projects being action RPGs (Jade Empire, Mass Effect), however I don't know what Dragon Age is. There most recent foray was Jade Empire, which could be passed off as an RPG if it hadn't been publicized and billed as an action RPG. Anyway, it's not as good as Neverwinter Nights 2 or KOTOR 2.