Sega unveils ‘Road to 2020 plan,’ which includes concurrent worldwide releases and reinvigorating ‘idle IP’

Bring back Skies of Arcadia please

Sega seems to be doing very well for itself. With the Sammy arm taking care of pachinko and Sega (along with Atlus) dominating in many respects, the publisher is going to be around for a long while. In fact, they just shared their schematics for their “Road to 2020” plan in the same breath as their recent sales report.

In addition to their commitment to bringing back “idle IP” (New Sakura Wars is being used as an example), Sega also wants to make a move toward concurrent worldwide releases alongside of some of the other big-time publishers. Sega actually breaks down how they’re going to do this in fascinating fashion, but I’ll paraphrase it here if you can’t get to the document at the moment.

Basically, Sega notes that before a game can arrive outside of Japan it needs to be translated in multiple languages, not just English, and that translation needs to be on point if they want to actually sell copies. Atlus has become instrumental in this process, with their US studio that “understands both Japanese and American games very well,” with the ability to localize games in a way that keeps the spirit of Japanese references alive and well (the Persona series is a perfect example of this).

Sega vows to “strengthen [the] collaboration further” with Atlus, and same-day worldwide releases are one of the ways they’re doing that. So for anyone who thought Sega’s purchase of Atlus spelled their doom, that doesn’t seem to be the case for the time being.

Integrated Report 2018 [SegaSammy Holdings]