Some interesting news I came across this morning. SEGA has posted a massive loss for this quarter: a whopping $56.4 million. What I found most interesting about this is that the head of SEGA's PR department laid the blame on two things: slow video game sales in Japan, and the company's decision to sell more PS3 games than Wii games.
I should say, I currently don't own a PS3, but I'm planning on getting one soon -- probably when MGS4 comes out. This post also isn't meant as fanboy bait, since bickering over which console is better is fairly stupid, and the industry as a whole is far better off with all three consoles making great games. Hoping that one console fails because you don't like it is retarded.
There are a couple ways to interpret this news. One could say that this is a sign that "casual gaming" (a label I absolutely despise, but that's probably a topic for another blog) is going to reign supreme over this console cycle, and that this is awful news for gamers. The fear would be that SEGA (and other companies) will see that the Wii is where all the money is at, and only make "casual games" for that console and neglect the others. It doesn't matter what SEGA made for the PS3 or how good it was, because they're going to make more money on the Wii peroid.
Another way to look at it is simply that SEGA's entire lineup was pretty pathetic, and the reason the PS3 games didn't sell that well is because they sucked. Virtua Tennis 3, Virtual Snooker Championship 2007, and Full Auto 2: Battlelines aren't really inspiring titles, and I doubt the majority of PS3 owners are really interested in games like that, especially since the 360 and the PS3 are, more and more, being seen as a haven from the sports games and quirky games that seem to have found a home on the Wii. Sure, SEGA had Virtua Fighter 5 and a Sonic game, but VF5 appeals to a pretty niche market, and the Sonic game was supposed to be abysmal.
In my opinion, SEGA doesn't have to give up on the PS3, but they do need to understand the audience they're marketing to on that console. They didn't suffer a huge loss because they developed for the PS3, they suffered a huge loss because they developed crappy games for the PS3 that don't fit its market.
What do you think? Is my analysis correct, or is this happening because casual gaming is destroying the industry?
[Via
Spong]
(# 0) on 05/13/2008 11:57
It's not casual gaming's fault. To paraphrase, it's the games, stupid. Look at their recent lineup; Yakuza 3 is the only one I'm faintly interested in, and it's not out in the west yet. They've just been making 3rd-rate games. You'd think they'd see they can make more money with quality than quantity, but this doesn't appear to have sunk in.
(# 1) on 05/13/2008 12:01
But given that they brought up slow game sales in Japan as point one, if Japan is all they're worried about focusing on the Wii probably would help 'em. Especially with them focusing on Japan, when the West is a pretty damn big market. I mean, did all that cash get lost becuse Japanese folks aren't buying as many games? Really? If so, time to change your focus there Sega...
(# 2) on 05/13/2008 12:02
The games weren't that fantastic (barring VF5, which ironically was better on 360).
And development costs on the PS3 are the highest of any console; due to the Cell. It's going to take a while for the programming community to get used to it since it's so different from traditional CPUs. It actually more closely resembles a GPU. Which makes sense because Sony had originally planned to use it for vid & general purpose cpu calcs. however they didnt expect ATi & nVIDIA to advance so far so fast, so they added the RSX (essentially a 7800GT w/ half the ROPs). So now devs had a traditional graphics system combined w/ a frankenstien CPU.
And to add extra problems, the 360 was the console w/ the large install base and also the one w/ the more traditional CPU. So the natural inclination was to start development there and port it to PS3. but porting doesnt work well since the PPU is the only part of the cell which can emulate a traditonal CPU's core & the 360 has 3 multi-threaded ones.
Just now are good devs getting to the point where they can come close to porting it w/o performance loss. But if you look at very complex games. Like GTA for instance, you can tell they had problems porting it to PS3; so what they did is lowered the res to reduce the overhead and used the PS3's SPUs for post-processing effects. Which seemed to work well. Gave the game it's own unique look. Different but not necessarily worse.
Anyway, point being. Unless it's an exclusive title w/ internal backing/help from Sony, chances are it's not a very profitable endeavor unless it's cross platform. And if it's cross platform it has to be a big enough title to warrant the extra work to make both versions equal (e.g. CoD 4). Otherwise it will turn out badly; financially & quality-wise.
As time goes by and more techniques are shared out of house I'm sure things will change and PS3 will become cheaper, more time efficient to develop for. But it's supposed to last until 2013-4 so there's still a long ways ahead.
(# 3) on 05/13/2008 12:14
(# 4) on 05/13/2008 12:20
Virtua Tennis 3 was pretty good for a tennis game, but the rest has all been shit in this generation :(
(# 5) on 05/13/2008 12:27
goddaaam thats awful. But I do hope SEGA brings sexy back. They really need to come up with some good new IP games.
(# 6) on 05/13/2008 12:33
yea. i weep for sega ) ;
I had every console they made since the Master System (minus the Nomad).
Really hope they make a comeback.
Sega Racing studios is gone, i hope it's not a sign of things to come.
(# 7) on 05/13/2008 13:01
(# 8) on 05/13/2008 13:30
(# 9) on 05/13/2008 13:43
(# 10) on 05/13/2008 13:46
I think they're running sonic into the grave. They need to concentrate their efforts on NEW IPs & Quality.
(# 11) on 05/13/2008 13:50
(# 12) on 05/13/2008 15:24
(# 13) on 05/14/2008 00:41
(# 14) on 05/14/2008 00:58