Gamescom 2018 will be kicking off this month and SEGA has announced the games it plans to bring to the show. There’s a few titles that may interest you including Team Sonic Racing and Valkyria Chronicles 4. Both of these titles will be playable on the show floor and hopefully there will be a surprise or two. The event takes place 21st-25th of August 2018.
“Team Sonic Racing, developed by award-winning studio Sumo Digital, is the ultimate arcade and fast-paced competitive style racing experience, featuring your favourite characters from across the Sonic Universe. Visitors to the stand will have the opportunity to race on an all new track, Ice Mountain, and experience two brand new playable teams.
Creative Assembly’s Total War: THREE KINGDOMS will also showcase never-seen-before content and consumers will get the chance to go hands-on with the game for the very first time. Players will witness an exclusive look at the exotic lands of ancient China in a campaign map flythrough before being thrust into the midst of a night-time ambush battle. Sun Jian’s army, led by Sun Ren and Sun Quan, must defend against waves of incoming heroes and warriors or choose to make a break for freedom.
As if that wasn’t enough, epic strategy RPG Valkyria Chronicles 4, frantic action/adventure Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, and the hugely anticipated rhythm games Persona 3 Dancing in the Moonlight and Persona 5 Dancing in the Starlight will feature on the stand in a collection of some of the hottest unreleased Japanese IP on the planet. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to play everything!
Football Manager 2019 will make its Gamescom debut this year as an official partner of the Bundesliga, with an activation that will put football fans in the firing line for questioning from renowned ESPN Football Journalist, Raphael Honigstein. After they’ve been grilled, they’ll get to line-up in front of a Football Manager themed step and repeat for an authentic Football Manager photo and leave with a Football Manager notebook. A must have for would-be managers! The game itself will not be playable.”
Source: PR
Where Sega’s gone is just sad. It’s like they’ve lost ambition entirely. They aren’t even really trying to make A-list mainstream games anymore.
Total War games are popular, especially with the Warhammer license now. The last game came out a year ago and there’s 13,600 people on it right now. The last historical version has 9,000 on. Combine the rest and there’s something like 30,000+ people actively playing the series as we speak.
Football manager has 60,000 in game. Both are critically well received with large player bases. Valkyria Chronicles is a cult classic that deserves more attention in the West.
That would be a great response, had I said that Sega makes bad games that nobody plays. My criticism wasn’t that they do nothing worthwhile. My criticism was that they do less than they could, and less than they have in the past. Total War is just fine for what it is. I’m not knocking it. It’s just that Total War is absolutely nothing in terms of market share compared to what Sega is capable of, or at least what they used to be capable of. You’re talking about the house that knocked Nintendo down from over 90% market dominance.
You said it’s like they’re not trying to make A-list mainstream games, and both Total War and Football manager are top contenders in their genre. To me that seems like effort. If there was more nuance to what you meant, I didn’t pick up on it.
Without knowing their financials, staffing, etc it’s hard to say to what extent they’re using their available resources to effectively grow their brand (“try”) Frankly, Sega’s one major Nintendo level success was an outlier, and basically the result of a one hit wonder (Sonic) and a few arcade ports (Streets of Rage, Golden Axe). Considering decades of failure, the current iteration of Sega seems to put out some solid work. It’s not like it shares anything with the Sega of 30 years ago other than a brand and a few licenses.
re: Your first paragraph. It isn’t that my statement was nuanced. It’s that we have very different standards for what constitutes an A-list mainstream title. You refer to Total War being at the top of its genre, but I would argue that doesn’t count for much. The best selling dating sim of all time is still a dating sim, and subject to the ceiling of its particular genre. Sega’s games used to be at the forefront for everyone even remotely familiar with gaming. Now it’s easy to be completely unaware that its biggest titles even exist.
As for your second paragraph, I don’t disagree with any of it. In fact, that’s exactly what *I* was talking about. I was commenting on the sad decline of Sega. You seem to be flopping back and forth though. Is Sega still making A-list titles like Total War and Football Manager, or is Sega a shadow of its former self? If Sega has had “decades of failure” and doesn’t “share anything with the Sega of 30 years ago”, then you aren’t disagreeing with anything that I said.
If it sounds like I’m not disagreeing with you it’s because I was only taking issue with the idea that they’re not trying, and I thought you were suggesting that the games they had on offer were mediocre. I do think their current state of making good games that sell well but aren’t Sonic 2 is pretty typical of Sega for 95% of their lifespan. So, to answer, I think they’re still making A-list titles, even if they’re not making games that hit that Sonic level of fame in the 90s.
I think you’re right that we were thinking in different terms for “A-list.” I can’t think of a lot of IPs that manage to hit Sonic/Mario in the 90s levels of public awareness though. Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, CoD, WoW, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and a bunch of Nintendo stuff on DS/Wii… a lot of those are dead or dying. Sony does really well while never getting a first party IP that really cracks that major level of awareness. Nintendo is the king of keeping their IP relevant.
I wasn’t trying to say that you were wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry if it came off that way.
Nintendo should buy Sega.
The Mario devs making a Sonic game would be epic.
Full of content and polished and gameplay first.
Please no. Let Nintendo buy Capcom first.
Sorry but I think that ship to buy Capcom has long since sailed. With the success of Resident Evil 7 & Monster Hunter World, Capcom has gotten themselves out of that ditch for a few years that even put them in the position of being bought by someone. Devil May Cry 5 being announced & Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for Switch coming this month is also keeping them out of that ditch.
Don’t forget Tom Kalinske was a big reason why Sega was able to rival and, on occasion, beat Nintendo in the early & mid 90s, too. The day Sega of Japan started ignoring his advice (like how it was too early to release the Sega Saturn to store shelves) was one of the reasons for their decline. I want to say it was basically on par with if Nintendo ignored Miyamoto’s advice in the late 80s, most of the 90s, & early 2000s. Unless they show signs of declining themselves, you never ignore the advice of the guys that made you big in the first place.
Persona dancing games!? … First Fire Emblem X Persona (even though it was supposed to be Shin Megami Tensei but that game was too colorful & cheerful looking to be SMT) & now this bullshit. Could this be the beginning of Sega slowly dragging Atlus down into the gutter with them?