SEGA has been on a roll in recent years with the success of Sonic, Persona, and Yakuza. Earlier this year in April, Shuji Utsumi became the CEO of SEGA America and Europe. His plan has been to double down of SEGA’s legacy with these three core pillars along with all of the company’s other classic franchises such as Crazy Taxi, Jet Set, Radio, Golden Axe, and Shinobi. As Utsumi explains in various interviews regarding the company’s recent success and plans for the future, he wants to bring that edge that SEGA was known for back in the day but for a modern audience.
In Utsumi’s mind, “SEGA’s role was to invent rock & roll, compared to Nintendo. Nintendo’s like pop music, good music, jazz. SEGA had that kind of style [back then]. SEGA’s position was like, ‘If you have attitude, SEGA’s the company for you, rather than Nintendo’, because of the games, because of the style, because of coolness or the kind of attitude. We have such beautiful content value in SEGA, and some other IPs, so we’re trying to revive it with little bit of the flavour of hip-hop now.”
In recent years, subscription services have gotten more and more prevalent, including in the video game industry with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and more having their own membership plans. With the rise, SEGA has been considering launching a service of their own, Utsumi told BBC that the subscription models were “very interesting,” and his firm was “evaluating some opportunities.”
“We’re thinking something – and discussing something – we cannot disclose right now,” he said.
While Utsumi is intrigued with the idea of SEGA having its own subscription service for its games, others are hesitant to add yet another service. Twitch streamer Rachel Howie, aka DontRachQuit said she was “excited and worried” about another subscription service.
“We have so many subscriptions already that we find it very difficult to justify signing up for a new one,” she told the BBC. “I think that SEGA will definitely have a core dedicated audience that will benefit from this, but will the average gamer choose this over something like Game Pass?”
Sophie Smart, Production Director at UK developer No More Robots said “As someone whose first console was the Sega Mega Drive, what I’d love more than anything is to see SEGA thriving and this feels like a step in a modern direction.”
However, she is concerned that creating a new service would lead to the removal of SEGA’s games from the other services that they’re already on. “If so, it could mean that consumers are shelling out more money across owning multiple subscription services.”
“Gamers loved Sega because we showed a new style, attitude and lifestyle to gamers,” Utsumi says. “I want to bring that feeling back. But we are not just a nostalgic company, we need to be innovative. We need to appeal to modern gamers, too. We respect the old IPs but I’m also demanding that the developers think about innovation in each of the projects.”
When asked if SEGA’s plans include more mini consoles, Utsumi said “I’m not going for the Mini direction. It’s not me. I want to embrace modern gamers. We really appreciate our legacy, we value it, but at the same time, we want to deliver something new – otherwise we’ll become history. That’s not what we’re aiming for.”