I don't get how the heads at Sega think.

[ShinMaruku]

They have cared just not in the ways you think. They still make their money here. :P

[NegaTsukasa]

It's a shame. Sega's games very unique.

[Mantiskilla]

It's a shame. Sega's games very unique.

Agree completely as shown with Vanquish. That game is really good (just wish it had a form of multiplayer). Yeah Sega like most japanese game companies I think play "close to the chest" so they really don't market their games for anyone outside of Japan. Sure, the fanbase for Sega games outside of their native country is apparent (see THIS website lol) at the end of the day I think they don't do enough marketing to really get the ball rolling internationally unless its a Sonic title

[Sinue_v2]

Agree completely as shown with Vanquish.

Vanquish wasn't made by Sega, it was just published by them. You're thinking of Platinum Games, formerly Clover Studios (the guys behind Viewtiful Joe and Okami) and a few other high profile developers (such as Shinji Mikami who made Resident Evil and Devil May Cry).

Platinum Games enjoys a good working relationship with Sega, namely by leaving them the fuck alone to create the kind of games they want to create. So Sega's greatest contribution to some of the best games of this generation has been their ability to give them money and to keep their hands off of them.

"When we created Platinum Games, we of course talked to a lot of publishers, and Sega offered us the most freedom to develop games. I think the partnership has been great, and I’m really grateful for their support. For the future of our partnership, of course, it’s not something that we alone can decide. Sega has its stance, and we have ours, but if Sega asks us to make something we might take the offer." ~ Atsushi Inaba

[BIG OLAF]

Yes, the reason Bayonetta and Vanquish are so awesome is because Sega never got to lay a greasy mitt on either one.

[Sinue_v2]

No, that's not the reason why they are great, and that's not the point I'm trying to make. I guess you could try to make that point, but that's a bit like saying the reason why the Mona Lisa is great is because someone has yet to dip their manhood in a can of dutch-boy paint and tried to please it.

[BIG OLAF]

No, that's not the reason why they are great, and that's not the point I'm trying to make. I guess you could try to make that point, but that's a bit like saying the reason why the Mona Lisa is great is because someone has yet to dip their manhood in a can of dutch-boy paint and tried to please it.

Not really understanding the analogy, but all right. Go back to whatever you were doing.

[venn2010]

Not really understanding the analogy, but all right. Go back to whatever you were doing.

I don't get the analogy either. I do get what he was originally meant to say, but his analogy seems... way off.

But one thing that's for sure is that even if the publisher rarely interferes, they can still have great impact on how the game turns out to be.

[Sinue_v2]

I don't get the analogy either. I do get what he was originally meant to say, but his analogy seems... way off.

But one thing that's for sure is that even if the publisher rarely interferes, they can still have great impact on how the game turns out to be.

It was modded due to the disturbing nature of the mental imagery, though it's lost it's meaning and impact in the sanitation process. In other words... imagine what the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel would look like if Pope Julius II had approached Michelangelo and commissioned him to "paint by numbers" to his own unqualified/unskilled imaginings of what he wanted the ceiling to be... rather than giving him the creative and financial freedom to come up with his own vision.

And I don't consider Sega to be, at this point, a very inspired or talented game development house. They're third rate in a second tier place, climbing up from their financial problems on the backs of movie licenses and mass market pandering crap... which would be fine if they still had the core talent and focus somewhere to funnel that new money into and produce a steady current of excellent games. Instead, they've let their IPs languish, and worse, tried to turn them into the same uninspired blase crap while using name recognition as a crutch for lower budgets and rushed development cycles... trying to make games they think will sell, rather than just making good games that people want to buy. If there's one thing you can count on Sega for, it's a deluge of repackaged bundles of their "glory days games".

I think Sega still does have the talent and the focus to reclaim that lost respect and admiration... but they're not utilizing it. Not recognizing it. Not realizing it. And so... you get fan projects like the Sonic 2 Remake that completely blows away what the "professional" game developers in charge of the IP are capable of producing.

Spoiler!

Yeah, Sega sucks at marketing... but even if they didn't, that wouldn't really solve anything. PSU didn't fail simply because of a lack of marketing... it failed due to several factors ranging from poor pre-development decisions up to post-launch server maintenance abortions, and very little of it could they change once the game was already in the wild and their business plan already in effect. All the marketing in the world can't polish flawed product, and it would have ultimately just generated a lot more angry customers to rage quit.

But hey... if people need an easy answer and a scape goat, I guess "poor marketing" and "negative attitudes in the community" work well to that end.

[venn2010]

Instead, they've let their IPs languish, and worse, tried to turn them into the same uninspired blase crap while using name recognition as a crutch for lower budgets and rushed development cycles... trying to make games they think will sell, rather than just making good games that people want to buy. If there's one thing you can count on Sega for, it's a deluge of repackaged bundles of their "glory days games".

I think that this portion of your post is pretty much true for most game companies, not just SEGA, that had great starts in the past but ended up becoming excessively large corporations, which only cares about profit now a days... Just look at SquareEnix, EA, Activision, and etc, etc...