Atlus has announced that it will be creating its own European publishing team, located in SEGA Europe’s headquarters. This will enable them to start publishing their own titles in the future, likely signaling the end of their publishing partnership with Deep Silver. Commercial director Simon Inch is already on-board for the new team, and moving forward they will be adding a PR manager and a product marketing manager.
SEGA Europe has announced that their COO and President, Jurgen Post, is leaving the company. Post has been at the company for ten years, and it’s fair to say that SEGA Europe has done well under his leadership ever since he assumed the role of COO back in 2012. That said, the changes the company underwent were drastic. In this latest interview with gamesIndustry.biz, he explains how and why they made the changes that would end up reviving SEGA Europe. In particular, their strategy involved handing a lot of responsibility to their development studios, with SEGA Europe acting more in the role of a publisher. While this has caused the SEGA brand to remain more in the shadow of their own IPs such as Total War and Football Manager, Post believes the SEGA brand will flourish again as long as they get the games right.
SEGA Europe have confirmed what most people had expected since their teaser website went up, and that’s the fact that the original Bayonetta is being released on PC, exclusively on Steam. What we didn’t anticipate is that the game is already available on Steam right now. And for a limited time only, the Digital Deluxe Edition is available at no extra cost to all those who purchase the game before April 25. The Digital Deluxe Edition includes a 5 track soundtrack sampler and digital art book from the original Climax Edition, enhanced with concept art, and exclusive wallpapers and avatars. The game is priced at $19.99/€19.99, similar to the cost of the highly successful PC version of Valkyria Chronicles.
SEGA of America has released a new trailer to promote the Yakuza 0: Business Edition release. All pre-orders and first print copies of the game in the Americas will consist of this Business Edition, which includes the game itself, a business card holder decorated with the tattoo designs of the game’s protagonists, bi-lingual replicas of their in-game business cards, and a special Hostess card. Sadly the video also confirms the Business Edition won’t be released in Europe.
It took a while, but today the SEGA 3D Classics Collection was finally released in Europe! SEGA Europe have released a launch trailer to celebrate the occasion, along with screenshots of the various games included in the bundle. The collection includes a range of classics SEGA games, remastered to take advantage of the 3D display of the Nintendo 3DS. You can find the trailer, screenshots and more details on the games below!
SEGA Europe has announced that the SEGA 3D Classics Collection will be released in Europe on November 4th. The collection includes a total of nine classic SEGA games (take a look below for the complete list). The recent live stream of SEGA Central featured a trailer for the game, and also revealed that the game will get a digital and physical release. We also included some screenshot, courtesy of SEGA Europe, below!
SEGA of America and Europe have issued a new press release announcing the release date for Yakuza 0! The game will be released on January 24, 2017 in both physical and digital form (so Europe will get physical copies as well this time around). For preorder links, you can visit the official website here. It appears it will also be possible to preorder the digital edition, although it’s not available yet at the time of writing.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Segalization as a whole.
It’s fair to say that SEGA Europe has been a lot more active on social media over the past year, especially with the arrival of Dan Sheridan as their new community manager. But while the renewed SEGA of America has been hard at work on bringing SEGA games from Japan to the Americas, things didn’t go as smoothly in Europe. Whenever SEGA of America announced a new game, SEGA Europe didn’t immediately follow suit. The release of Yakuza 0 in Europe was initially in doubt, and it took a while for it to finally be confirmed. The SEGA 3D Classics Collection for the Nintendo 3DS was eventually confirmed for a European release, but we’re still without a release date even though the game is already available in the US. Similarly, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X was only recently confirmed for a European release. Unfortunately it comes with the caveat that the title won’t receive a physical release, even on PS4.
In an earlier article, we speculated that Deep Silver could be a potential candidate to bring Atlus and SEGA games to Europe, following the news that they would be publishing The King of Fighters XIV. Today that became a reality as Atlus, SEGA of America and Deep Silver have announced that they have entered a publishing deal for Europe. As part of the deal, 7th Dragon III Code: VFD, Persona 5 and SMT IV: Apocalypse will be releasing in Europe with both physical and digital versions! And the deal includes other, as of yet unannounced, games as well.
If there was any doubt that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X was heading to Europe after the reveal that SEGA Europe would be publishing the game in Australia, someone on the NeoGAF forums has now pointed out that the website for the German rating system USK (basically the German equivalent of the ESRB or PEGI) now also lists a rating for the game: