By the way, as of yesterday (which was technically July 1rst, even though yesterday was the 2nd, but Japan’s one day behind us), by order of the new Sega/Sammy regime, all of Sega’s internal studios have been shut and consolidated into one whole group.
Back in early 2000, just as Dreamcast was making its presence known in America (and as it was already defending itself against PlayStation 2 in Japan), Sega made the move to give identities to all their internal studios by making them, more or less, separate companies. Some already did have name recognition, such as Sonic Team, thanks to titles like Sonic the Hedgehog (duh), NiGHTS, and Burning Rangers (and not Phantasy Star, which no one at the time was aware that they were also responsible for), but most other devisions were simply identified as AM’s, though AM2 was itself pretty already highly regarded, thanks to it’s helmsman Yu Suzuki and their arcade hits, like the Virtua Fighter series and Daytona USA.
So instead of cryptic names like AM1, AM3, AM9, or AM Annex (which was actually AM8, or was it?), we then had Amusement Vision, Hitmaker, SmileBit, Wavemaster, United Game Artists, WOW, and others. As a Sega fan, this was good because not only did it finally gave an identity to those who made awesome games, but the chance for some recognition for their efforts. Plus it just made things easier to keep track of; you could expect certain kinds of games from certain studios, and since the notion of creating an identity within their games was highly encouraged, some exceptional titles came about. My favorite team was easily UGA, which was headed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the young uber talent behind Sega Rally and Manx TT. Given his own team and a chance to do whatever he wanted, the results were Space Channel 5 and Rez, the latter being a game which synthesized art, music, and gameplay into a complete package like no other.
Though as everyone knows, things never seem to work out for Sega. After the Dreamcast was officially deemed dead, so was the notion of pursuing the hardware market, thus the decision to go third party. Many were optimistic that the individual dev groups would possibly flourish in an open market; they were all given the ability to make autonomous choices, such as what systems to support. But without the ability to stand out on a parent company’s platform, most of their games simply got lost in the shuffle and under performed horribly.
Then as Sega’s woes got worse, many of these groups were merged in rather nonsensical, and sometimes volatile, combinations, such as when UGA, which was all about artistic expression in games that catered to a mature audience, was merged with Sonic Team, which was all about created fun, simple games that was good for the whole family. On a side note, Sonic Team tried the whole artsy route with NiGHTS, and it bombed big time, so it’s no surprise that they don’t want to go there anymore. Hence why Mizuguchi left ASAP when the merger was done.
But today Sega is being controlled by Sammy after a hostile take over, and their main edict is to cut the fat, no matter what. And having separate teams seems to make little sense in their eyes, hence the decision.
If one goes to the official Sonic Team homepage you’ll find a message to the public explaining the situaion (in Japanese of course). Plus there’s a quiz, and if one does well enough, he or she will be eligible to win a special commemorative pin (see image from above)
Also, there’s an announcement regarding a special commemorative CD which contains music from their games recorded live. Here’s what’s going to be on that album…
- “Chant this Charm” (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg theme music)
- “I Just Smile” (Burning Rangers ending theme)
- “Sonic Heroes” (Sonic Heroes theme music)
- “This is My Happiness” (Space Channel 5 Part 2 ending theme)
- “World with Me” Phantasy Star Online Episode II ending theme)
- “Dreams Dreams” (NiGHTS theme music)
You can buy it directly from the site, and get this, its only 1000 yen ($9)! Word had it is that it was recoded during a Tokyo bay cruise for the Sonic Team/Sega staff from this past March. Man, I would have loved to be present for that. Hopefully the recording will include the snickering which one would expect the Space Channel 5 song to get.
Quick thanks to Raxel on the Gaming Age Forums for the boat cruise tidbit.
So what does this really mean? Well on one hand, it signifies the end of era of unbridled creativity, or at least the chance for it. While some groups did excel creatively, such as UGA of course, as well as SmileBit who created the Jet Set Radio series, which did much to reshape the video gaming landscape. But others didn’t do so well. Let’s take Sonic Team for example. Their best games came definitely before being their own separate entity: NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Chu Chu Rocket, and Samba de Amigo (which was released just after they became autonomous, but was in development before that, so it doesn’t count in my book). After the big change we got Sonic Adventure 2, Billy Hatcher, and a card based Phantasy Star Online. Plus there’s Sonic Heroes, which I have yet to play, but once again, I’m not dying to either.
Maybe the reason Sonic Team and other has such a hard time (and lousy output) was because they were too busy dealing with the kind of business related headaches, like balancing budgets and the such, that Sega used to just take care of. So perhaps it is a good move, to go back to the “old ways of operating”. Hell, those ways helped to produced a ton of stellar titles for the Genesis and the Saturn.
But will we ever see a game like Rez again? Doubt it. But we did get a game like NiGHTS from the old way of things, so things may not be so bleak afterall.
