Yakuza's Toshihiro Nagoshi Retires As SEGA CCO As Publisher Restructures

This likely has something to do with the enormous losses SEGA has experienced in its arcade business in Japan as a result of Covid/Lockdowns - pretty sure they have all been sold off which is absolutely tragic. They were a key part of the Tokyo landscape when i visited. In fairness, not sure how the arcade business can survive in a post covid world mind.

And SEGA Joypolis was absolutely incredible. Urinals with videogames attatched. Look them up. They are amazing 🤣

Hopefully this is as they say - a restructure. It certainly won't stop the SEGA Microsoft acquisition talk though

I doubt SEGA's getting acquired by anyone anytime soon. Microsoft already secured a Japanese developer when they bought Zenimax and got ahold of Tango Gameworks

This probably has more to do with the significant losses they dealt with as a result of the pandemic, of which their biggest success was probably the sales output from Persona 4 Golden on PC, not even getting into them closing down their arcade joint in Akihabara

@TheFrenchiestFry I'd say this is absolutely the beginning of setting things up to sell off something. Could be selling the games division to MS. Could be selling the games division to Tencent. Could be keeping the games division and selling off the amusements division to someone else. They already sold off the arcade operations division. But I think one division or the other, this separation is very clearly designed to have the ability to sell off something cleanly as a unit.

If it were just internet rumbling, it could be ignored, but they're dividing divisions into clean units and shaking up structure immediately after selling off one division and reporting huge losses. One or the other is getting sold. It may well be the amusements division since that's more likely to generate long term losses at this point, but something else is getting sold here.

Its not as simple as companies like microsoft coming in and buying Sega because The Japanese government put strict restrictions for foreign companies buying Japanese companies back in 2019.
As it has been mentioned already The restructuring has been the cause of Covid and the damage it has done to arcades In Japan and other areas surrounding Sega Sammy.
Sega are still much more than a gaming company since they make toys and own movie studios.

@TheFrenchiestFry you seriously think p4g on pc did better than p5r on ps4? Nonsense

@HammerKirby3 Well P5R also came out like right when everything was going into lockdown but during the pandemic P4G was like their big game they highlighted as a success

It already broke like half a million in its first week so who knows where it's at now. If it wasn't that major of a success they definitely wouldn't be putting Strikers and the Nocturne remaster both on Steam almost immediately afterwards

Am I the only one that wishes Sony would buy Atlus, or Yakuza Studio. That would be awesome. You could still have the Persona games come out on Switch, but it would be nice if Sony was like "Persona is one of the biggest series on Playstation, let's get Atlus , and Yakuza is amazing as well".

So... Is that a promotion or demotion?

@TheFrenchiestFry P4G was 20$ on steam and steam takes 30% of the first 10 million $ and 25% between 10m$ and 50m$ and I don't think P4G made that much in steam (found only 500k sold on steam) maybe it's now 1 million but don't think SEGA made that much, however p5r being a ps4 exclusive I'm pretty sure sony don't take 30% on the store or/and they helped fund the developement of the game so SEGA should make way more money on p5r than P4G

@OthmaneAD P4G sold 500K in its first WEEK on sale. I'm pretty sure it was already confirmed it was among the top 40 best selling Steam games of the entire year though its exact placement is unknown, while it was also among the top 25 new games released on Steam in 2020 and among the top 12 controller-compatible games. This is straight from Steam themselves

@TheFrenchiestFry P5 Royal has sold over 1.5 million copies. The reason they highlighted the success of P4G on Steam is that they were genuinely surprised how well the game sold. They didn't think the market would be so big. Strikers coming to Steam is a reaction to that.

If they had any sense, they would build on the new found global interest in the series following the success of P5/P5 Royal and release Golden on PS4/5 aswell.

@Rob_230 The fact that P4G was re-released only on PC and no other consoles tells me this is more of a reflection of SEGA's clear bias to putting legacy content on PC first before anything else

They pulled a similar tactic by bringing Yakuza to PC first after PlayStation. I'd be shocked honestly if they put Persona 4 Golden that quickly on any other consoles. PC is also apparently getting the Nocturne remaster as well based on datamine leaks in addition to Strikers and it's a safe bet that in terms of mainline Persona, P3 is probably next to get the Steam treatment. I'd say stuff like Persona 3 on Steam is way more likely at this point than Golden on other consoles