Sega Talks VF5 Online, Wii, Imperialism
Next-Gen recently spoke with Sega’s Scott Steinberg, who explained his statements about Wii’s (lack of) longevity, why PS3 users were stiffed on Virtual Fighter 5 online and Sega’s colonization of the Western world.
A memory lapse
Gamers recently nailed Sega of America VP of marketing Scott Steinberg for merely questioning the longevity of the Wii in a Reuters interview. “How much value can developers and creative folks get out of this wrist motion two years from now, or five years from now, or 10 years from now?” Steinberg asked at the time, implying that he had doubts about the sustainability of the Nintendo Wii’s success.
So of course, the first thing we do is ask Steinberg to clear up his statements a bit more.
But he has a memory lapse. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Did I say that?” he asks quizzically, and completely tongue-in-cheek.
"All three consoles have got the right materials for success."
Steinberg explains that in fact Sega is currently balancing its portfolio quite evenly between all major platforms, including PC. Right now, the firm isn’t banking on one sole platform.
“Are we placing bets [on one particular platform]? No one can tell right now who’ll ‘win.’ It’s still too early. All three consoles have got the right materials for success. That alchemy is there across all three different platforms. I guess that’s being defined a bit differently with Nintendo, but they definitely have their own consumer-oriented track, which we think is great. So I think from a third-party publisher’s standpoint it’s not wise to make bets right now that don’t include all three consoles.”
His statements check out when you look at Sega’s upcoming lineup. There’s Condemned 2: Bloodshot for Xbox 360 and PS3, Universe at War for PC and Xbox 360 (cross-platform play enabled, too), Space Siege for PC, and on Wii alone there’s the AM2-developed light gun game Ghost Squad, Mario and Sonic Go to the Olympics and Nights: Journey of Dreams, among several other titles.
And what’s with all the PC titles? Not only does Sega have Space Siege from Gas Powered Games and Universe at War from Petroglyph in the works, but the company bought Total War house Creative Assembly in 2005, a specialist in the PC real-time strategy genre.
The focus on PC is somewhat surprising for a company that made its name in the living room, not at the desktop. “That’s the other thing that was heresy three or four years ago for Sega. To be on the PC was looked at as ‘one of these things is not like the other,’ and the reality is that over the last three years we’ve made a big effort to go on the PC with a measured approach, RTS being our major focus,” Steinberg says.
Why’d PS3 owners get stiffed on VF5 online?
Sega recently announced that the Xbox 360 version of the stunning Virtua Fighter 5, which is coming out months after the PS3 version this fall, would be online multiplayer-enabled. PS3 owners weren’t lucky enough to get that feature, as Sega AM2 said in the past that the lag in online play would be unacceptable, thus marring the preciseness that the series prides itself on.
But if that’s the case, why did the Xbox 360 get online and the PS3 got stiffed?
Steinberg explains that Sega simply “wanted to go to market quickly with the PS3 SKU” in order to release it within the console’s launch window, so that console missed out on the online fun.
“[AM2] felt that with the 360 they could make online happen."
“I don’t know how to explain it other than by defining [the VF5 dev team] as just the most incredible craftsmen-oriented group. They’re perfectionists, I guess is probably a better way to say it. They have always been concerned about lag time and that game is as real and pure as a fighting game gets. It doesn’t play around, it takes itself very seriously, and they didn’t want that lag online to be a barrier to people’s experience of the purity in gameplay.”
While Sega was working on the PS3 version of VF5, it was also readying the upcoming Xbox 360 version.
Steinberg explains that getting online to work with VF5 for Xbox 360 was kind of a “skunk works” project.
“[AM2] felt that with the 360 they could make online happen, and with a lot of trials and tests and experiments figured out a way to do it where there’s no lag—well extremely minimal lag, almost unnoticeable—so we were quite shocked when they told us it would be online, actually. It was a surprise.
“…I think they felt like, hey, let’s surprise the world.’ That’s how it all kind of came down, so it was one of those great, just serendipitous kinds of moments where it happened and we weren’t expecting it.”
Sega the Imperialists
The key word for Sega these days is expansion, namely expansion into Western territories. This is clearly seen in partnerships with studios like Gas Powered, Monolith Productions, Creative Assembly, Secret Level and Petroglyph.
Steinberg said it’s Sega’s goal to have each major region—North America, Europe and Japan—to participate in equal thirds as far as studio development is concerned.
“That will probably never mathematically work out to be right, but the goal is to diversify and make sure that we’re covering our bases,” he says.
It’s interesting to see how many of Sega’s Japan-born franchises were made or are being made by Western-based companies: Sega Rally Revo, Nights Journey of Dreams, Shadow the Hedgehog and a new Golden Axe, for example, are being developed by Western studios.
“We have more studios in Europe than are developing games internally,” Steinberg adds.
He seems to like the term “Western expansion,” and he jokingly runs with it. “…So the Sega imperial strategy is proof positive that it’s working and once we add Sudetenland we’ll be on our way,” Steinberg says rather hilariously.
Via Next-gen.biz
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