Matt Keller Editor in Chief
To be honest, I almost had a heart attack when I saw Red's article on Yu Suzuki leaving AM2, mainly because I thought I'd never see Shenmue III (which I am craving). A sigh of relief followed when I saw it was merely a shake-up, and most of my favourite teams will be merging, and that Yu Suzuki would get a studio of his own to focus on Virtua Fighter and Shenmue. Not entirely sure about this Sonic Team-UGA merger, I feel that Sonic Team have been out of form for a while, and the focus for this team (games for the casual audience) may put UGA out of place, but we'll see.
John Buck Director of Design
From looking at the article, the arrangement makes sense. Take the smaller, less profitable teams and merge them with the big, important teams. How much difference this will make to games development in the long run is anyone's guess, the smaller teams didn't exactly knock out the games on their own (UGA's last games were Rez and Space Channel 5 part 2, first released in 2001).
The business side of things would change quite a bit. More integration of resources and less semi-independent development houses making their own decisions. It would also increase the amount of manpower for the remaining teams allowing them to work on more projects at once.
The only real downside I can think of is that merging the development houses might decrease the amount of fresh and innovative games coming from Sega.
Red Staff Writer
It depends 100% on who they link with whom.
I'm not quite sure how Sega are wanting to split the companies up, but we can make some assumptions. AM2 will almost certainly remain by themself - they're at least twice as big as the next-biggest subsidiary within Sega. By the same token, I think we can wave goodbye to Sega Rosso; they've made very little in the way of killer franchises and, besides, are a team of only around 30 people - by far Sega's smallest.
My massive worry is that they're going to do it simply; merge a small team into a large one and so end up with half the number of bigger companies, presumably reducing costs and consolidating their talent. This could be an absolute disaster for some of the studios; here I'm thinking of United Game Artists in particular - they're loved by many, but simply don't do enough as far as raw sales and franchise saturation goes. In their case particularly as well, it's highly likely that they'll be set to making mobile phone games ad infinitum (if absorbed) which would be a tremendous waste of the talent belonging to a development studio that is only just beginning to make its mark on the gaming world. It's worth noting here that UGA were due to unveil a big upcoming game back in March (believed to be in addition to the widely talked-about Space Channel 5 part 3), which was most conspicuous by its absence. Things have been very quiet for the music-based developer since then, and I think that the fact that this has been on the cards for a while could be the reason for their silence, as pointed out by Sonic.
That's my biggest concern, definitely - that formerly-independent subsidiaries could be swallowed up by the bigger Sonic Team and possible Amusement Vision. But, on the other hand, there are good things to be said about a possibly shakeup within Sega. Consolidating, say, the work of WOW! and Hitmaker, possibly also with Sega Rosso, Sega would have then a team of massive talent which is almost exclusively set on making arcade-style games.
This would be the most sensible way to do it, but Sega haven't been very sensible about such things in the past, and of course I don't have the worry of internal company politics hanging over my head at the same time. As things stand, I'd want the following
Sonic Team + Overworks + Red Entertainment
Wow! + Hitmaker + Sega Rosso
AM2
Smilebit + Amusement Vision
United Game Artists
This certainly narrows the possibility of any one team getting completely excluded, grouping companies that develop similar games together. It's a very simplistic assumption, and it relies particularly on my own hope - that UGA get left alone in order to do what they do best. I believe, however, that it would make the remaining four teams very similar in size, and the talent in some of them would be amazing; Yuji Naka and Rieko Kodama on a new RPG, for instance, would be fabulous - the two super-developers worked together last on the Phantasy Star series, and anything approaching the brilliance of that would be readily welcomed.
My only other worry is about AM2. As I've mentioned above, they're an absolutely massive development studio, but plans that reach us at the moment suggest that all of their biggest recent franchises (Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, amongst others) will be directed away and given to the new studio that Yu Suzuki would be setting up. I question the motives behind this, as it seems insane to me to create a new studio while at the same time chopping respected ones off at the knees.
A mixed bag, overall then, and this raises some questions as to whether Sega really is doing the right thing. I think that, if done correctly, it would have the impetus necessary to really give the company a boost, but at the same time there are some mines to be avoided. Many of them would probably only affect ME (and the handful of other people in the world with my tastes), but others scare me a lot, and could throw Sega into a downward spiral; I think particularly here of (God forbid) splitting teams in order to direct some of a team's talent here and the rest there. This could work, but it would need a delicacy on the part of Sega's management that I'm almost sure they don't have.
My position: I'm very optimistic, but I also have some reservations. And, of course, if they f**k with UGA then someone is going to DIE.
Paul Moran News Editor
Overall, I believe it will help Sega in the long run. Streamlining the studios and pooling internal development talent should increase the quality of the end product. My main concern though is the merging of Amusement Vision and Smilebit. The former have been doing a great job on the GameCube with the classic Monkey Ball series and upcoming F Zero GX set to vastly improve the franchise. I’m a little worried that Smilebit will hinder AV’s projects. After all, Smilebit are supposedly an Xbox-only development studio. What’s the point of teaming up GCN and Xbox specialists when AV is getting along fine on its own? Of course, the specifics of the studio shuffle are still a rumour, but I think AV should be allowed to operate independently, even if Smilebit have been a bit dodgy as of late
Other than that, I have no concerns about this news. It’s good that Sega are addressing its fragmented operations post-Dreamcast and aim to structure its operations better.
John Buck Director of Design
Sega as a whole seem to be moving towards multi-platform releases as shown by Sonic Heroes, so it makes perfect sense to merge Smilebit and AV together. I assume though that the larger teams will be the surviving brand (Sonic Team, AV, Wow, etc) and they will make the decisions on where specific games go.
Red Staff Writer
Smilebit and Amusement Vision probably has more meaning behind it than just arbitarily joining random teams together - I think the focus there is to take certain developers out of both teams and put them in a DIFFERENT team - one of the two new ones which are to be created. This new team would concentrate on Sports games and so, I'd assume, would take the members of Amusement Vision who work on Virtua Striker and the members of Smilebit who make the famed and bestselling "Let's make a... (Pro Baseball, Pro Soccer, etc) Team!" games.
I'm interested in what'll happen when they join them together, although personally there's a part of me who wants to see Overworks and Smilebit back together, reuniting the members of the legendary Team Andromeda.
Brendan Staff Writer
Will it result in PAL release of Initial D: Special Stage? If so, it will be the greatest decision ever.
Unfortunately, Halvard, Jonas, Leigh and Fido were unavailable during the roundtable. Rumour has it that Jonas and Halvard were facing an Oslo magistrate for allegedly date-raping huskies, while Leigh and Fido went on a journey to discover the fate of legendary ABC TV Show host Peter Russell Clark.
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