Sega

Sega

The once great console manufacture that downgraded into a third party company whose only main interest is Sonic the Hedgehog.

Founded:	June 3, 1960
Founder:	Martin Bromley Richard Stewart
Headquarters:	Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan
Key people:	Haruki Satomi (chairman and CEO) Kenji Matsubara (president and COO) Ian Curran (president, Sega of America) Gary Dale (president, Sega Europe)
Subsidiaries:	Amplitude Studios Atlus Creative Assembly Hardlight Relic Entertainment Sports Interactive Two Point Studios
Website:	https://www.sega.com

Sega Games Co., Ltd. (Japanese: 株式会社セガゲームス Hepburn: Kabushiki gaisha Sega gēmusu), originally short for Service Games and officially styled as SEGA, is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with multiple offices around the world.

Sega is a subsidiary of Sega Group Corporation, which is, in turn, a part of Sega Sammy Holdings.

Sega developed and manufactured numerous home video game consoles from 1983 to 2001, but the financial losses incurred from their 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast consoles caused the company to restructure itself in 2001, and focus on providing software as a third-party developer from then on.

Bad Qualities

They used to only care about and milk Sonic the Hedgehog to death and ignore most of their other franchises like Puyo Puyo, Ristar, VectorMan, ToeJam And Earl, Phantasy Star and Alex Kidd and they're constantly pressured Sonic Team to make new Sonic the Hedgehog games every year. While they still support a few like Yakuza, Sonic the Hedgehog took way too much priority for Sega.
- Speaking of the milking the Sonic The Hedgehog series, they also focus way too much on Sonic himself in recent games, while ignoring most of the other characters (even Tails), as they're reduced and downgraded to cameos and spin-offs (most notably Blaze, Silver and Cream).
- It also resulted in not only one of the worst Sonic games ever made but one of the worst games of all time, most notably Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.
- In fact, they've even admitted that they only kept Sonic around for business reasons.
- Due to their constant pressure on Sonic Team, some of the key members left from the company.
- Speaking of Sonic Team, whilst they were developing Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic and the Secret Rings, they were also developing Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis and Sonic Riders which were both coming out the same year as Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Sega had FOUR games in development and released THREE within a span of a year which is just outrageous and was a major factor for the previously mentioned departure of employees.
Sega used to be a powerful first-party console developer that competed with Sony and Nintendo but constant conflicts between Sega of Japan and Sega of America and terrible mismanagement caused a large chain of flops that led to them restructuring themselves in 2001. Now, ironically, they release games for Nintendo and Sony consoles.
- Speaking of Sony, Sega also helped to create the PlayStation. After Nintendo abandoned the deal to partner with Philips, Sony approached Sega and asked them the same offer to work on an add-on. While Sega of America agreed, Sega of Japan disagreed and cancelled it entirely claiming Sony doesn't know how to make hardware or software. This backfired horribly however, as it not only created the PlayStation brand but the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 outsold the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast so badly that it pretty much sent Sega out of the console business.
They cancelled the release of Streets of Rage 4 on the Saturn because Bernie Stolar (their President at the time, and the same person who released the Saturn early) had somehow never heard of the franchise, despite releasing three SoR games on the Genesis/Mega Drive. Ironically, SOR4 was eventually announced in late August 2018 and released in 2020.
They released too many consoles and accessories only to discontinue them quickly whenever they didn't sell well. At one point Sega had at least five different 32-bit consoles announced at once, of which only the 32X and the Saturn were actually released and both flopped hard.
- They also keep relying on AtGames to make Genesis/Mega Drive Plug n' Play systems, which always suck.
- Their re-release of the Sega Game Gear, called the "Sega Game Gear Micro", goes to show how out of thought they are with making consoles.
  - It is far too small, which can make it difficult to use for people with large hands.
  - There are four different versions each with only four games on them, and all of the games are different between the versions.
  - Each version costs $50, which means that one will have to spend $200 just to get all 16 games.
They focused too much on nostalgia (most notably Genesis/Mega Drive and Sonic the Hedgehog (thanks for the Sonic Generations' success)), going as far as throwing Classic Sonic in Sonic Forces right after Sonic Mania was released. Even the long-time fans of the franchise are now bored of the constant nostalgia-pandering.
- In addition, they constantly release their Genesis collections to just about every platform, while ignoring most of the others.
- Heck, they even almost ruined Sonic Mania because of this. They made the developers keep adding levels from the Genesis trilogy like Hydrocity Zone and Lava Reef Zone with no changes to the levels at all from their 16-bit counterparts except for current-gen 2D graphics. Fortunately, five new zones still made it into the final game.
- They've also been catering more towards the Classic Sonic fanbase as opposed to the Modern Sonic fanbase (people who actually like the Modern Sonic games). As a result, starting from Sonic Generations (and a little bit in Sonic Colors) despite being good, the Modern Sonic era began to notice a dip in quality over the years due to more emphasis towards just the platforming and slowing the pace of Sonic's speed. Sonic Forces was a perfect example of how much the Modern Sonic era downgraded due to this.
They tried to make Super Sonic paid DLC in Sonic Forces. Fortunately, they made him free DLC after the backlash. Not to mention, It was an On-Disc DLC.
Despite Sega acknowledging their decline in quality, they still keep developing Sonic games that feel lazy and uncreative in both gameplay and story due to them playing too safe. They've also haven't really been doing much to ease critiques about the franchise and mostly appeal to fans by making self-deprecated jokes at themselves and the Sonic franchise on social media, which is a very childish and unprofessional way to address their flaws.
They've become notorious for their atrocious deadlines which serve no purpose or advantages towards their games other than to make a quick and easy profit. As mentioned in BQ #1, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has greatly suffered in quality because of this with notable examples being Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) for a 15th anniversary, PS3's launch and Microsoft's contract, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric to coincide with the T.V series and recently Sonic Forces to either come out the same year as the Nintendo Switch or to compete with Super Mario Odyssey.
- Speaking of the latter, Sonic Mania already came out that same year giving no reason whatsoever to release Sonic Forces.
- This also led to Sonic X-treme being cancelled entirely due to the developers gaining an illness over working to hard to complete it before Sega's demanded deadline.
- For their consoles, they rushed out the Sega Saturn four months earlier in order to come out before Sony's PlayStation. The end result was a infamous launch that had a lackluster line-up of games, major retailers refusing to sell their console and poor sales. Even with that early launch, the PlayStation eventually released four months later and single-handedly outsold the Saturn within a single day, which is truly humiliating.
Learning nothing from BQ #1, Sega lied about Sonic Forces, as they advertised Shadow and Chaos in the trailer, along with "the team brought you Colors and Generations" quote, while Shadow and Chaos appear in the game, they serve absolutely no purpose in the game along with other characters and two of the level designers never worked on a Sonic game before.
They've gained a habit of misusing their game and physics engines for the Sonic the Hedgehog games. The best examples of this are Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and even the recent Sonic Forces which all suffered from clunky physics and severe amounts of bugs and glitches due to their poorly optimized game engines.
They even made a contract with JungleTac to make an officially released retro console based on JungleTac's infamous Zone series, which also happen to be Wii rip-offs.
In 2012, they abused the DMCA to take down videos discussing the Shining Force series, even if said videos had no gameplay of the games in question, likely to increase search traffic for their trailers for the then-latest installment in the series, Shining Ark.
- This caused the late TotalBiscuit to boycott all Sega products, from 2012 to 2017.^[1]
When Phantasy Star Online 2 was released, they announced an English localization for a 2014 release, but did little else about localization news, and even kept quite about it, going as far as deleting their US page for the game. Fortunately, Microsoft bribed them to change their minds once again as the localization was re-announced at E3 2019.
They tried to keep the Puyo Puyo series Japan-exclusive, And didn't wanna localize it with it's original setting. One prime example is Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, a game which replaced the original characters with villains from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. However, the Puyo Puyo series would later see full western releases like Puyo Puyo Tetris and Puyo Puyo eSports (Localized as Puyo Puyo Champions).
- Not to mention, people outside Asia can download Puyo Puyo!! Quest via QooApp.
- English Puyo Puyo fans are currently translating and localizing Puyo Puyo games. Like Puyo Puyo Chronicle.
- 3D Puyo Puyo 2 was included with the localization for Sega 3D Classics Collection, Without replacing it with Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.
They censor Sonic and other characters' feet for an unknown reason. A good example is the Mario and Sonic Olympic at the Olympic Games series, where the Sonic Characters wear shoes while swimming, surfing, karate where the rest of them were barefoot. This is also seen in Sonic Forces where you can't give your avatars an option without shoes completely, not to mention the stupid foot censorship of Sticks in the Sonic Boom episode "Designated Heroes"

Good Qualities

Despite their downfall, they're slowly improving themselves and they used to be much better back in the day. For the redeeming qualities, click here.

Videos

An ironic commercial considering the colored screen is why the Game Gear was a failure while the Game Boy was one of the most successful consoles ever.