Conclusions: Sega As A Third-Party Failure?

There was much that I couldn’t have been expected to predict in this article. Sega did fix some of the mistakes they made with the handling of the Saturn, mostly in the area of actually releasing games, and doing a decent job of it. Sure, the voice acting in Shenmue sucked, and there was no Japanese option – but at least they tried. Yeah, it was impossible to find the Samba De Amigo maracas – but at least they tried. Okay, they grossly overestimated the popularity of Space Channel 5 – but at least they tried.

I would be remiss, of course, to point out that even after two years of decent treatment from Sega, they did pull out yet again. I understand they were going “platform agnostic” and all, but that doesn’t mean they had to stop producing Dreamcast games for all the people who plunked down two hundred bucks for their system two years ago! I think games came out for the 3D fucking O longer than two years. And the games were there, of course, in Japan: Shenmue II, Space Channel 5 Part 2, Rez, Headhunter… not to mention amazing third-party titles like Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Ikaruga.

On the eve of Sega’s move to “platform agnosticism” (read: the complete dumping of the Dreamcast and a simultaneous sharp kick in the Mean Bean Machine to its users), a very well-known and respected game journalist told me to “look for Sega to become a third party publisher and make a ton of money.” Hell, I believed him. It was conventional wisdom at the time that Sega would experience a return to profit almost immediately.

Well, they didn’t. In fact, Sega ran a loss again after its first full year of being a third-party publisher. What happened? In short, they decided to spend all of their 2003 budget – yeah, their 2003 budget – on their SegaSports line, taking on EA directly, head-to-head, with all their sports titles across all three systems and my God if it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster.

By playing it cool, by sticking with their strengths, they would have done very well. But SegaSports is not their strength. People who remember World Series Baseball 2K1 on the Dreamcast would count SegaSports as a serious weakness. Sega’s strength was and is the innovative games created by its (Japanese) designers. By putting the focus on those games they might have turned things around. But they didn’t.

And now, Sega is in its worst shape ever. If anyone from the Genesis days still works at Sega, I would imagine that they pine for those heady, carefree times. And yet somehow I don’t think anyone from the Genesis days still works at Sega. But you know who’s going to be working at Sega soon? People from Sammy… or Namco… or EA… or Microsoft.

There’s no Sega party at E3 this year – first time ever. Money’s very, very tight. The booth will probably be low-key. Hell, the booth might be merged with Namco’s for all I know. Sega may become nothing less than a brand name, or maybe the brand name will up and die. A tragic, and yet somehow completely predictable, end to a company that was never quite able to keep itself afloat in a burgeoning, profitable industry.

Chris Kohler