Justin Scarpone sat down for an interview with VGC at Gamescon Asia. He explained that Sega was going to use it’s classic games to rocket the company to entertainment stardom. This investment will be across multiple formats.
Gaming companies have been famous for their competitive nature. Several of these companies compete for who makes the most powerful console, sells the most games/consoles/subscriptions and even whose consoles are cooler. Sega and Nintendo had a famous rivalry back in the day that led to some awesome commercials and some questionable performance justifications. It seems like they are back at it again. Sega released it’s massively successful Sonic movies and Nintendo released the Super Mario Brothers movie. Nintendo released classics on it’s online platforms and Sega followed suit.
Tin hat theories aside, Sega is doubling down on the entertainment value of their IPs. From movie successes to licensee deals with Roblox and Lego. Business is booming. What’s more, games like Jetset Radio, Shinobi and Sonic the Hedgehog have seen multiple new releases.
Back to Justin Scarpone, a former Disney employee. He is now the head of Transmedia whose focus is to take Sega’s successes across multiple forms of media with Sonic and replicate it with other Sega Classics. Like A Dragon the live-action series premiered on Amazon Prime recently and the third Sonic the Hedgehog movie is releasing on the 20th of December(US). Scarpone mentioned that there are plans to open a SEGA store in Tokyo. Multiple TV projects are also in the works inspired by games like Golden Axe and Shinobi.
It sounds like this is just the start of SEGA’s plans to break into the entertainment space, focusing on more than video games. If you’d like to read the full interview between Justin Scarpone and VGC you can find it here. If you’re curious about Shinobi as a film franchise click here.
