Sega has revealed that their upcoming Crazy Taxi reboot will be a AAA title.
As reported by Video Games Chropnicle, Sapporo Studio president and Sega senior executive officer Takaya Segawa spoke candidly about this title in a new interview. Takaya said:
“We’re responsible for titles such as Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis and Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage in cooperation with the bases in Tokyo and overseas.
We are also participating in the development of triple-A titles, including Crazy Taxi. At present, we don’t have any titles developed independently by the studio, but we intend to do so in the future.”
Crazy Taxi started out as a fun and moderately successful arcade game, with a standing cabinet setup complete with racing wheel and brakes. The core conceit of the game is, as a taxi driver in New York, you take on different passengers to take around different locations in New York. You can be a menace on the roads, predating Grand Theft Auto on this by two years. But (and this is a huge but) you get higher bonuses for being a safe driver while you get passengers to their destination on time.
Sega ported the title to the Dreamcast in 2000, where it became the third largest selling game for the platform in the US. It sold over a million copies in the country, cementing it as one of those all-time hits.
In spite of the initial title’s success, it wouldn’t last as a franchise. After ports to various platforms, including the GameCube and PlayStation 2, Crazy Taxi 2 also released in 2001 solely on the Dreamcast, and Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller released on the Xbox, to later be backported as an arcade title.
Crazy Taxi 2 and Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller were both not as successful as the original, and they didn’t really make enough changes to the formula to sustain interest. To put this in perspective, Criterion’s Burnout series started in 2001, making it a close point of comparison. Burnout would add up to seven AAA titles and one small scale spinoff game, with Burnout Paradise still finding new players thanks to a remastered version that has itself been republished across different platforms.
There’s a health generation of gamers that are Crazy Taxi fans; but the game needs to see a dramatic change to its formula to be successful in 2024. It could fill in a void of AAA arcade style racers, now that the industry is dominated by high profile AAA sim racers like Gran Turismo and iRacing.
We hope that Sega Sapporo knows the challenge they are facing with this new Crazy Taxi, and they can deliver on our hopes on a true modern sequel to bring the franchise forward.
