The new head of Sega West, the merged group of Sega America and Sega Europe, made the rounds in New York City the other day. Kotaku had an interesting sit down with him, and we’ve pulled together a few key quotes from the guy in charge of turning around the once-dominant publisher.
On the idea that there’s a unifying feel to Sega’s games:
“In some cases, but not all,” Hayes said, answering this early question with the thoughtfulness and lack of diplomatic self-censorship with which he’d field all of my questions. “When we are trying to do core games like Aliens vs. Predator from Rebellion, I don’t think you’ll find any Seganess in that. However, there are a lot of games that we do do whether it be particularly with our old intellectual property, like Monkey Ball, like with Mario and Sonic and things like Let’s Tap it’s that kind of slight risk-taking that Sega was renowned for as innovators that we still do and we still intend to do.”
On Mature-rated Wii games:
Another hyped grouping of Sega games has been its trio of Wii games targeted to the demographic of gamers that prefers a good headshot or chainsaw kill to an interactive sit-up routine: House of the Dead Overkill, MadWorld and the Conduit. Hayes views their fortunes as mixed. Sales reports don’t show blockbuster numbers for any of the games, but, Hayes said, “I just don’t think, categorically, that you can therefore concludes that mature games won’t work on Wii.”
On MadWorld, the critically-lauded hyperviolent M-rated Wii game:
It is the mostly black-and-white, hyper-violent MadWorld that Hayes dubbed a “disappointment” for reasons he can’t yet nail down. “It could be the consumers didn’t like the art style,” he said. “It could be the consumers had enough Mature-rated games to play on 360 and PS3 and didn’t need a new experience on Wii.”
The publisher famously left the hardware business after the disappointing Dreamcast, though that system still maintains a huge following. Characters like Sonic the Hedgehog still sell millions of units in critically-panned games on current generation systems, but Sega still has a long way.
Anyone have any suggestions for how to help Sega market itself to that audience that has since left?
[More at Kotaku]