In an interview with video game magazine Weekly Famitsu, Sega Sammy CEO Haruki Satomi recently talked about the company’s current status and their plans for the future.
Satomi made a lasting impression last week with his appearance at Sega FES 2018 in Tokyo, as he opened the event to show a series of new games among other exciting news. These included a new Sakura Wars game, a remastered version of Shenmue I & II, and other plans scheduled for the coming months.
Now the CEO confidently disclosed how his company managed to remain profitable in all regions for two consecutive years. These profits were spread across multiple business segments including arcade, smartphones, consoles, PC, merchandise, and animation. Having achieved this level of success, Sega is looking forward to new challenges and experiences for the company and, by extension, for gamers.
Before moving forward, however, Satomi acknowledged that his employees were lacking spirit and confidence, prompting him to extend two messages to everyone. The first message reminded employees to regain pride to keep supporting their many fans. The second was to create and continuously provide new, exciting content to said fans.
To help cultivate a winning mindset, he urges producers to help release a game only if they’re absolutely confident in the product, regardless of sales expectations. In fact, he strongly believes the company is slowly regaining the trust of consumers, and their newfound commitment naturally plays a major role for the company’s earnings in the future.
Even more interestingly, Satomi said he actively listened to fan feedback regarding old franchises making a comeback. This immediately brought the new Sakura Wars game to mind, and the re-release of the Shenmue series is proof that the man means business.
The CEO also expressed an interest in targeting non-Sega fans more aggressively to keep the company’s production line from stagnating. These long-term goals will take place by operating from four different angles: Managing current IPs like Sonic and Yakuza, reviving old IP franchises, creating brand new IPs, and finally, working on franchises from other companies.
Lastly, Sega is also looking into esports and will focus on that front much more in the future.
The company appears to be headed in a new and exciting direction, and we can’t wait to see what Satomi-san and his team can bring to the table.
Which Sega franchises are you looking forward to?
[Via: DualShockers]
