By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
setsunatenshi on 31 January 2015
Edit Thread
Game_God said:
setsunatenshi said:

 that is the wrong question, the right question is... 'how much woud it cost?'

actually an even better question is 'how profitable would it be?'

a few different options are on the table:

A- SEGA decides to go the mobile route exclusively and maybe only publish other companie's ips

In this case I would argue they are sitting on assets for which they would have very little use for. They could very well sell the rights to their old ips that they haven't used for a long time nor have the capacity to use again (Shenmue f/e).  Depending on their plans on mobile I would say they should also think about selling off phantasy star, shining force, story of thor (going oldschool xD), Streets of Rage (c'mon!) etc.

On Sony's side, with consoles needing a boost on the JP market, guaranteeing the rights to such cult Japan made classics should make a big impact on the sales of vitas and ps4's in Japan mostly.

I haven't even mentioned Atlus which has almost single handedly been feeding the western market on JRPG's for the past several years.

 

B- SEGA decides to sell out completely:

 

That would be a lot more complicated, with Sony in the middle of a global restructure, after selling off the Vaio division, downsizing in the TV business, it seems like they have put their eggs in the Playstation ecosystem. I would imagine that with the focus on the playstation as a service (playstation now, playstation vue, playstation video and music, playstation plus...) they need to shift their investment to content and not as much on the hardware side of things. Would it be profitable acquiring such a rich backlog of content as the one SEGA sits on? Maybe, again, it depends on the cost. If the point was to simply re-release the same games in digital form to buy or rent, probably not. But having the teams in active development feeding new content could be very very valuable.

 

Will any of this happen... unfortunately I don't think so. One can hope though.


While I do agree with what you wrote, congrats on the elaboration :) I maintain, what I said, when you don't have money to buy i.e. Sony ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/12/us-sony-ceo-idUSKBN0KL27F20150112 ) you can't afford to look for anything to buy!


Well, there's one gigantic pre condition for any of these scenarios to be remotely true... which is, do the SEGA shareholders want to sell off any of their assets? Unfortunately I don't think we have any data pointing to that happening so it's all one big fantasy for now :P

I am well aware of Sony's difficulties, their restructuring started a few years ago and seems like they are really becoming much more focused now on what's making money. From the latest keynotes and interviews I saw Kaz Hirai, it appears as though Playstation is the new face of Sony. It might be good for them to double and triple down on making the Playstation brand even more widespread as well as focus on content creation + delivery.

The old Sony approach of making 1000 different types of hardware is ending which will definitely cut a ton of costs (also a lot of jobs unfortunately) but might actually be the winning strategy for them. Much like Apple had gone through bad times before hitting the jackpot with their 'I' line, it would seem to me Sony has to hit it out of the park in what they can do best. If I was the one making the decisions, I would consider very seriously taking steps to get some SEGA goodies onboard ;)