It’s a well-known fact that if you want to “make it” in the video game industry, you can’t simply rely on one thing and hope it’ll keep carrying you to the “promised land.” SEGA is a company that has learned that the hard way over the years. When they entered the console wars, they were red hot thanks to their “Blue Blur” and were able to make Sonic The Hedgehog an icon in no time flat. But after some questionable console choices, sorry Dreamcast fans, they had to bow out of hardware and solely go forward with making software for their competitors.
Even with that shift, it hasn’t been easy for them; they’ve had plenty of ups and downs that have been well-documented. To that end, it makes it all the more ironic that Sonic The Hedgehog once again helped save the company in various ways. The two movies that were made of him in the last three years were hits in Hollywood, and his two recent games were well-received, with one of them selling over three million units!
But will SEGA learn from the past and not just focus on their blue bur? In an interview with CNBC, Sega Chief Operating Officer Shuji Utsumi confirmed that SEGA did have plans to expand their reach into other areas of entertainment and platforms beyond just putting Sonic everywhere:
“We have other major IPs,” Utsumi said. “We are thinking of reviving other classical IPs too.”
We know some of the game series that SEGA is focusing on for the near future, like Persona, Like A Dragon, and more, which the COO further confirmed:
“As I say, we are trying to be in a lot of different categories, different areas like Roblox, movies. All these IPs can be somewhere else other than games soon.”
What he means exactly isn’t clear, but it wouldn’t be unlike what Nintendo has been doing, trying to bring their IPs to mobile platforms and slowly getting into the movie market. Mario had a billion-dollar film in 2023, and Link is getting a live-action movie.
SEGA has also been teasing a “big game” in early 2024 that the COO also teased in the video part of the interview. He wouldn’t confirm what it was, but he did say it was more than “just a game.”
While it’s great that SEGA is “getting things back together,” it’ll take many franchises firing on all cylinders to keep them going. So, let’s see if that happens.
