Aside from acquiring Atlus, we haven’t seen Sega make a splash in a while, but Sega Games CEO and president Haruki Satomi recently spoke with Famitsu on what they’ve learned from Atlus along with some of their plans for the future. [Thanks, Hachima]
During the interview, Famitsu asks Satomi about his thoughts on the current home console market.
“It may look rough if you look a it from a Japanese standpoint, but on a global scale the PlayStation 4 has a record-selling history, so I believe there’s a good opportunity there,” says Satomi.
He goes on to say that he also feels good about the Asian market, where the Chinese version of Yakuza Zero had sold much better than expected.
“As far as the Western market goes, we learned a lot from Atlus,” continues Satomi. “If we can make a title with proper quality, I believe there’s a good chance for it to do well even in the West for players that like to play Japanese games.”
Next, Famitsu asks what are they’re looking to focus on more when it comes to home console games.
“I’ve been talking to the employees about how we should start putting serious consideration into quality from this point on,” responds Satomi. “Especially in North America and Europe, where it’s always been more of a focus on schedules, I believe that if we can’t maintain quality, it would be better to not release anything at all.”
Satomi continues, “We did our best to build a relationship of mutual trust with older fans of Sega, but looking back, there’ve been some titles that have partially betrayed that [trust] in the past 10 years.”
Famitsu asks if it’s safe to expect a high quality title to be released sometime in the second half of this year.
“Since we’re seriously considering quality, I can’t make that promise for the time being, but I believe we will announce something for home console at Tokyo Game Show,” says Satomi.
Finally, Famitsu asks about what more can we look forward to in the future.
“Sega in the ‘90s was known for its ‘brand, but after that, we’ve lost trust, and we were left with nothing but ‘reputation. For this reason, we’d like to win back the customers’ trust, and become a ‘brand,’ once again.”
Update: This story has been corrected to reflect that Haruki Satomi, the CEO of Sega Games, made the statement.
