Dreamcast Otaku | News: Sega's vice-president, Mr. Sato speaks about the Dreamcast's future

News:

Sections

Home
Mission
The Otakus
Editorials
Cheats n Codes
News Archive
Reviews
Previews
Release Dates
Top 15
Links
Banners
Most Wanted
Contact Me
Sign Guestbook
Forum
Search the Web

2.01.01

Sega's vice-president, Mr. Sato, speaks about the Dreamcast's future

Here's what Mr. Hideki Sato had to say about the background leading up to Dreamcast's discontinuation:

"Sega has been constantly growing as an amusement developer since its foundation in 1960; it entered into the console market after 1983, and continues to [provide] products that are on the cutting edge. The world is of the general opinion that Sega has outstanding game software resources and is one of the top game developers across the globe. The present environment surrounding the game market, however, is currently in the process of a radical change to one where, under our current profit structure, it is difficult to keep a balance between our hardware and software businesses that allows for the sales of hardware to expand. Consequently, we have reached the decision that concentrating on our content business, which is our specialty, is the best way to restore financial stability."

Sega's exclusive advisor Mr. Tetsu Kayama -- who became their Structural Reorganization Promoting Manager today (February 1) -- stated their solid programs which are expected to restore the lost revenue:

Dreamcast business in future
"Although Dreamcast console production is to be halted, we will continue its software business by aggressively releasing titles for the console in Japan, the US, and Europe. We have top notch titles in development, including Sonic Adventure 2, for the next year."

Providing Sega games to non-Sega consoles
"In addition to the titles we announced today, we will continue to provide more games for PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance. Concerning PlayStation, we will remake and port many of the popular games from our Saturn library and focus their distribution on North America and Europe. We forecast that our total game title sales, including both Dreamcast's and other console's titles, will grow fifty percent during the next year."

Network business
"We will continue concentrating on network games, although we have no plan to make an investment in the infrastructure. We are currently working on developing a total of ten online games for Dreamcast or the PC, all of which are original projects, that also leave the door open for our multi-platform plans. We have already sat down for business with Sony Computer Entertainment to go over network-compliant applications and services."

And there we have it...if anything about this whole Sega becoming a third-party was ever foggy, it was just cleared up faster than Visine on red eyes (ok, maybe not that fast, but very close). I can't forget to thank famitsu.com for all of the information in this article.

--Dreamcast "Mac" Otaku
When Sega of Japan's VP talks, we all hold our tongue and listen.

Want more?