Sega Europe COO and president Gary Dale, executive vice president of publishing John Clark, and VP of marketing Anna Downing commented on the matter. From gamesindustry biz:
"The thought of people on low-end laptops being able to play games like Football Manager and Total War is something we really embrace and support, so we're really interested to see how all the players push forward with significant streaming announcements and services," Clark says. "I think bandwidth is a very important thing, just to see how the services function. So we'll look at Google Stadia's rollout with a lot of interest to see how that maps out. And for the future, we're all interested to see how economies of streaming are going to work, the business models, etc.
"At this point, streaming and cloud have been around for a long time. We worked in the old days with Gaikai and OnLive, and we've worked with PlayStation Now since. But it really seems like this is an interesting time for bigger players to come through and make a significant impact."
"What's interesting about a lot of the philosophies of the operators of the streaming services is the idea of extending the audience reach," Dale says. "They're trying to find new users and give them access to games in a way that hasn't been done before. So obviously, working with those partners gives us potential access to broader audiences, so there's growth there.
"We're seeing growth coming from new markets or markets that are starting to open in a different kind of way, particularly in Asia and particularly China. Then within our existing portfolio, we're constantly looking to find ways to broaden the appeal of our existing franchises, whether that's Total War, Football Manager, or Company of Heroes. Whatever it is, we have a constant mission to extend the reach of those. And on top of that, we look at new IP opportunities as well to further increase our offering."
Dale acknowledges that Total War: Three Kingdoms benefited in China from having a historical Chinese setting, but adds that Sega doesn't make games specifically for a single market. Three Kingdoms was designed to appeal to the series' core audience around the world, and he notes it has performed well in all the markets where Total War games typically succeed.
"We still have a strong commitment to bringing out Japanese content on multiple platforms, and that focus will fall to a separate team," he stresses. "That's still alive and well and we've got a lot of energy behind it. The team at Searchlight is focused on Western content. If we look at the start-to-finish of Two Point and Two Point Hospital, that's a perfect example of how we want Searchlight to work."
"When do you ever stop reaching the audience? There's always an audience there on one format or another," he says. "We've got great content and we're never going to saturate the audience for all of that retro content, so I think we're going to continue to bring it out as broad and wide as possible."
"The thought of people on low-end laptops being able to play games like Football Manager and Total War is something we really embrace and support, so we're really interested to see how all the players push forward with significant streaming announcements and services," Clark says. "I think bandwidth is a very important thing, just to see how the services function. So we'll look at Google Stadia's rollout with a lot of interest to see how that maps out. And for the future, we're all interested to see how economies of streaming are going to work, the business models, etc.
"At this point, streaming and cloud have been around for a long time. We worked in the old days with Gaikai and OnLive, and we've worked with PlayStation Now since. But it really seems like this is an interesting time for bigger players to come through and make a significant impact."
"What's interesting about a lot of the philosophies of the operators of the streaming services is the idea of extending the audience reach," Dale says. "They're trying to find new users and give them access to games in a way that hasn't been done before. So obviously, working with those partners gives us potential access to broader audiences, so there's growth there.
"We're seeing growth coming from new markets or markets that are starting to open in a different kind of way, particularly in Asia and particularly China. Then within our existing portfolio, we're constantly looking to find ways to broaden the appeal of our existing franchises, whether that's Total War, Football Manager, or Company of Heroes. Whatever it is, we have a constant mission to extend the reach of those. And on top of that, we look at new IP opportunities as well to further increase our offering."
Dale acknowledges that Total War: Three Kingdoms benefited in China from having a historical Chinese setting, but adds that Sega doesn't make games specifically for a single market. Three Kingdoms was designed to appeal to the series' core audience around the world, and he notes it has performed well in all the markets where Total War games typically succeed.
"We still have a strong commitment to bringing out Japanese content on multiple platforms, and that focus will fall to a separate team," he stresses. "That's still alive and well and we've got a lot of energy behind it. The team at Searchlight is focused on Western content. If we look at the start-to-finish of Two Point and Two Point Hospital, that's a perfect example of how we want Searchlight to work."
"When do you ever stop reaching the audience? There's always an audience there on one format or another," he says. "We've got great content and we're never going to saturate the audience for all of that retro content, so I think we're going to continue to bring it out as broad and wide as possible."
