SEGA has announced that it will pivot its business towards its video games division, with a more “aggressive” push for PC ports of its legacy titles.
The news comes as the company revealed that it saw a huge increase in Steam game sales during COVID-19 lockdown. The recent PC port of Atlus’ Persona 4: Golden was cited as a key example of the uptick in sales.
In fact, SEGA’s Entertainment Contents group – which includes its digital entertainment products such as video games – was the only division that performed well in the past quarter.
According to SEGA Sammy’s recent quarterly results briefing, the rest of the company took a massive beating. Its other divisions – pachinko, amusements and resort parks – suffered as people stayed at home in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Repeat sales” of catalogue titles increased significantly in March and April 2020, SEGA announced in an investor Q&A (reported by Gamesindustry). While sales slowed in June and July, overall the division’s sales were up over the previous year. “Going forward, we intend to aggressively promote the porting of previously launched titles to Steam and other new platforms,” the company said.
“Under such direction, we would like to take multi-platform rollout in account and prepare the PC version and others from the start.”
While this new direction for SEGA Japan concerns the entire company’s output, this can also be good news for the Sonic franchise. While a huge amount of the blue blur’s back catalogue has been ported to Steam already, there are still some holdouts – Sonic Colours and Sonic Unleashed being amongst them. If SEGA is serious about both supporting PC ports and re-releasing games in its back catalogue, we could see more efforts to preserve older Sonic titles in the future.
Black Knight with mouse slash controls.
I’m pretty sure all you would need is WASD, Space and the mouse.
The potential prospects of this make me happy and at the same time very wary. It would mean a lot to see fully functional and faithful ports of many of the other Sonic titles but I feel somehow that in the quote on quote “aggressive” push to get some of these titles on PC that there will be a lack of care or polish in doing so and it make those experiences much lesser than they could be. I’ll hold out for hope though, would love to see the likes of Colors, Heroes, Storybook titles and the like on the PC platform, as well as Billy Hatcher and Jet Set Radio Future.
Here is hoping for Sonic Rush and Sonic Heroes ports
There already is a PC port of Heroes. Why SEGA hasn’t brought it to Steam yet instead of leaving it in abandonware hell is beyond me.
There might be a possibility that Sonic Unleashed may be ported to the PC. Sega could make a killing amount of money by porting the game to PC.
I agree so much. If there was a Sonic game I was dying to play for the past 12 years, it’s Unleashed.
Sonic Unleashed
Sonic Colors
Sonic Heroes
Sonic advance 1-3
Billy Hatcher
Super Monkey ball 1 & 2
And so many good titles to bring to next generation systems.
Hate to be the one to tell ya, but Sonic Heroes has already been ported to the PC
Been waiting for a Sonic Colours Steam Port…like forever. Come on SEGA!
Sonic Unleashed on Steam PLEASE! I miss that game so much. The whole game, not just the day stages (so don’t tell me to play Project Unleashed ;D)
If Sega doesn’t bring back Sonic Chronicles on PC they are cowards.
PC ports of the Christian Whitehead versions of Sonic 1 and 2 would be fantastic. I’m tired of having to run them through an Android emulator.
If I had to be perfectly honest, I just want Sonic 06. Never played it for more than a minute at a store kiosk, always wanted to try out Blaze and Silver. I am not getting a PS3 or 360 anytime soon. Just got a new PC but it can’t run Xenia. I need a native port. Sonic Next Gen is the missing piece in my Sonic quest, it’s the epilogue.
Just do it SEGA! People will buy it anyways.
I grew up playing Sonic games; my first game from memory was Sonic Mega Collection Plus for the PS2 and my favorite Classic Sonic game is Sonic 2. And I would love some more PC ports as much as the next guy but…
What I really want is JSRF primarily, or even Billy Hatcher.