Incline Sega is Working on a “String of High Quality PC Ports”

[Gangrelrumbler]

Still no Hatsune Miku, eh?

 

[LESS T_T]

SEGA launched SEGA Forever, free to play retro game platform, on mobile:



You can play games for free and it supported with ads, which you can remove by paying $1.99 per game. They plan to release two or three games per month and hope to bring Saturn and Dreamcast games as well.

More relevant to this thread and Codex's interest, they say they would like to expand this service to PC and consoles.

 

[flyingjohn]

Just get retroarch,it is better.
Also the retroarch devs were originally approached for making this,but Sega wanted to change the license so they don't have to share any contributions made and the retroarch team said fuck no.
So sega made its own unity wrapper which has plenty of problems with audio on most games.

 

[Muty]

Yeah retroarch is serious incline. You even get access to nice modern popamole features like rewind.

 

[LESS T_T]

Just get retroarch,it is better.
Also the retroarch devs were originally approached for making this,but Sega wanted to change the license so they don't have to share any contributions made and the retroarch team said fuck no.
So sega made its own unity wrapper which has plenty of problems with audio on most games.

SEGA "defends"...?: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-06-26-sega-defends-sega-forever-launch-after-fan-outcry

So, Sega Forever. I guess it's safe to say the launch hasn't been as smooth as you might have anticipated.

Mike Evans: The launch itself has been really positive - if you look at the vast majority of feedback it's been strong, if you look at ratings on the app store from consumers there's definitely some very good sentiment as well. Is there room for improvement like anything? Yeah there is. It's a very ambitious project, and it's taken a long time to get to this point. The beauty with what we have with mobile is that it's an ongoing programme. And we've got lots of things planned as we go through, and we're going to keep on working on that quality. For the vast majority of our fans it's solid, but the specialist guys who are looking for the absolute epitome of quality, we're going to keep improving for those guys.

You say it's been positive, but I'm looking at the top reviews - I know they're not gospel and are prone to hyperbole - but one of the top ones on the App Store for Altered Beast says 'Sega Forever is a massive joke'. You look at Phantasy Star as well - 'this needs to take massive steps with the emulation' - these aren't specialist guys, these are the top reviews on the App and Android store.

Mike Evans: We need to look at the larger trends on reviews as well, so rather than spot-checking one to represent the overall feel, we've been actively listening to all the reviews and trying to figure out if there is an area that we need to address. Phantasy Star is the title where we need to have the most work, if we're honest, we had a couple of challenges with Sonic out of the gate with users not being able to disable ads, we submitted an update yesterday and that fixed it. We've actively been going back to individual consumers one on one to address those issues. We want them to have the best experience possible.

I played two of the games today and I had issues with stuttering and audio issues - a lot of people are asking why we used to have versions of these games that used to run perfectly on mobile back as long as 2009, why is it that these ones aren't working.

Mike Evans: It's difficult to comment on the individual case because of fragmentation, all I can say is it's a small proportion. Without knowing the channels the game was run on previously it's difficult for me to make that comparison. Like I said, it's something we're working on.

On that note, I'm sure you've seen the comments from RetroArch, who said that they were working on the project early on and there was some sort of disagreement. What's your response to those comments?

Mike Evans: Yeah, so at the time I was unaware of it early on. One of the developers we're using, a company called GoGames, they'd been in talks with Libretro on the RetroArch emulator. That particular emulator is under a GPL, a general public licence. From a Sega perspective, we can't bundle GPL software with Sega proprietary games, because we lose certain rights within the games - it's a corporate policy for us. If we'd have known those conversations were going on we couldn't have acted on it anyway. That said, where we are with the Genesis and the Mega Drive we have a proprietary emulator that was used on the DS and Steam as well, and we've spent a lot of time working on that until the quality is solid as well. That's the kind of history behind it, and we're very much about working with the community - we have been working on the Master System for some time - and we're in touch with the community trying to figure out, like we've done with Christian Whitehead, can we actively work with them.

Is Sega Forever more of a cash grab than trying to preserve Sega's past?

Mike Evans: No. This is a passion project for us - it links into the corporate statement of reviving the brands as well, it's really something that's going to be done on an amazing scale. If you look at this project it's not a high-yielding project for Sega, it provides enough cash to make it viable but it's about getting the IP to the fans and allow them to rediscover it.

When it comes to emulation, a lot of people go to some of the less legally viable ones because the quality of the official ones just isn't there.

Mike Evans: Yeah, I think that's one of the inspirations for me - there's some amazing emulators out there in the community. The unfortunate thing is sometimes that's marred by spyware, by viruses, so where a more casual fan is trying to get involved with that content, a lot of the time they're concerned because they don't understand how to work the emulators. What we're trying to do is democratise and allow people to experience some of those games. The Genesis is where we're starting - don't take this as the definitive benchmark in terms of quality, it's where we're starting.

 

[LESS T_T]

On the bright side, PC Gamer published full interview on SEGA's PC gaming business: http://www.pcgamer.com/we-dont-feel-anything-is-off-the-table-says-sega-on-growing-its-pc-catalogue/

There might be some news about the PC game by ex-Bullfrog/ex-Lionhead guys this year:

Yeah, I’m trying to think about what we’ve got internally and when we’re going to release things but yeah, towards the end of the year I’m hoping we’ll give you more of an idea of what the project’s all about. You’ll love it.

About the console-to-PC ports, they're working on more games right now and news will be coming out in the next few months:

But at the same time, Sega has a real fantastic catalogue of titles. Pretty much everyone that works at Sega, they’re fans of Sega so we love all the games that we bring out, whether it’s Total War or Football Manager, or whether it’s the historic titles like Sonic the Hedgehog or Crazy Taxi or Bayonetta and Vanquish—we love those.

As gamers we play on Steam, we see our franchises on Steam, [and] we’d love to play all of our games on Steam. So when we’re looking to bring games like Bayonetta and Vanquish, [we] make sure that they’re relevant today. On one hand it’s getting the game ported to PC but on the other hand we need to make sure that they’re good PC games, making sure that technically they really, really deliver what the community wants and for what the tech-savvy community wants on Steam.

Things like frame rate is important to us, graphics card compatibility, mouse and keyboard, Steam features...we’ve managed to develop a way of working which really connects with that specific consumer as well.

I think when we launched Bayonetta, straight away on Steam I saw somebody say “We want to see these games on Steam now, we want to see... Sega, we want to see you working on these...”

And we’re looking at that and we say “Yeah, we know! We know!”—and we want to work on them as well and we haven’t finished. We just haven’t finished with Vanquish and Bayonetta, we’re still there—we are actively working on other games as we speak... we’re not ready to tell you what they are, but there will be news coming out in the next few months.

And how they (SEGA Europe) are "educating" Atlus and SEGA Japan/America about PC gaming:

One thing that you haven’t done yet is bring any Atlus games to PC—I was wondering what the nature of that relationship is and whether that is something we could possibly look at in the future?

The great thing about being involved with Atlus and you see it through Sega America and Atlus—they’re bringing out Persona 5, which is an Atlus title but they’re bringing out new editions of the Yakuza titles, they’re doing that together —and so it just makes sense that we all talk together about extending all of those, incredible IP, across to Steam and recognise the fact that the PC audience adds to those community and consumer experiences, it doesn’t detract from it and it isn’t anything that they need to be concerned about, so... those conversations definitely happen.

We see our role as educating our business about PC and Steam as well as driving our business forward in sort of retail and on console as well, and we’re all aware of the opportunities that are across all platforms for the IP.

I guess we'll hear more about upcoming ports at Gamescom and EGX (Eurogamer Expo). They are SEGA Europe's grounds, unlike E3.

 

[LESS T_T]

Teasers for the latest in the "string of high quality PC ports"!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/460790/announcements/detail/1680275500369804955

https://steamcommunity.com/games/294860/announcements/detail/1664512901676324625

http://steamcommunity.com/games/460810/announcements/detail/1647624403069348768

... which is Puyo Puyo Tetris:

 

[LESS T_T]

Coming in February 27th:

appid: 546050

This app was created on October 2016, heh. What took them this long?

 

[Outlander]

'Protected by Denuvo Anti-tamper'

 

[LESS T_T]

Curiously, the game is region locked in Asian region except Japan and Vietnam: https://steamdb.info/app/546050/

And more than that, while they sell it in Japan (for almost 60% more expensive price than USD counterpart) it will not have Japanese text. (They specified this is "English Edition" in Japanese description.) What's this muck-up magic, SEGA? Are SEGA Europe and SEGA Japan in the same group?

 

[Gerrard]

It's not just SEGA, Japanese publishers are retarded when it come to PC. Atelier Firis is one of the few releases that even includes full Japanese language, most games that have the option for Japanese voices don't have the text option.

 

[LESS T_T]

Well I get that they want to remove Japanese text when they don't want to sell PC version to Japanese gamers (for whatever reason.)

What I don't understand here is that why they're can't get Japanese text when they're selling it to Japanerse gamers and even wrote the store description in Japanese. It's not like this game is originally written in English, and they couldn't afford the rights to Japanese translation done by another company. Or should have paid for addtional royalties like Japanese VO.

Obviously SEGA is the owner of this game, SEGA wrote Japanese text in the game, but for some reason they don't want to (or can't?) add it to this PC version. That looks weird to me. (Vanquish and Bayonetta have both Japanese text and audio.)

And that makes me suspect that it may be something to do with the reason they're so slow at releasing the "string of high quality PC ports." Maybe some power struggle and politics inside the group.

(Well, now I'm making up a conspiracy.)

 

[LESS T_T]

Looking at SteamDB history, Bayonetta's codename is Papaya, Vanquish is Pineapple. Is this the convention for SEGA's PC port initiative, or Platinum's? Can we expect Mango, Banana, Avocado, and more?

JC: You can.

Yeah this is a thing with SEGA PC port initiative.

Puyo Puyo Tetris is Kiwi.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Yakuza games when

 

[Great Deceiver]

Pretty sure Sony is hoarding the Yakuza license and I think a PC release is highly unlikely.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Well I get that they want to remove Japanese text when they don't want to sell PC version to Japanese gamers (for whatever reason.)

What I don't understand here is that why they're can't get Japanese text when they're selling it to Japanerse gamers and even wrote the store description in Japanese. It's not like this game is originally written in English, and they couldn't afford the rights to Japanese translation done by another company. Or should have paid for addtional royalties like Japanese VO.

Obviously SEGA is the owner of this game, SEGA wrote Japanese text in the game, but for some reason they don't want to (or can't?) add it to this PC version. That looks weird to me. (Vanquish and Bayonetta have both Japanese text and audio.)

And that makes me suspect that it may be something to do with the reason they're so slow at releasing the "string of high quality PC ports." Maybe some power struggle and politics inside the group.

(Well, now I'm making up a conspiracy.)

Isn't that because they simply don't want to give Japanese gamers an easy way to acquire Japanese games from outside of Japan? Sine everything is more expensive there? The other explanation I could think of is that they are afraid of piracy and prefer most readily available cracked copies online to be of no use t an average Jap. Sure it seems paranoid, but I wouldn't put it past Japanese developers.