SEGA Games CEO Responds to Famitsu Interview Feedback

Haruki Satomi SEGA Games — SEGA Games CEO Haruki Satomi. Image belongs to Famitsu.com article sourced within this writeup

Around the start of this month, Siliconera posted an article featuring translated comments from an interview conducted by Famitsu.com with SEGA Games CEO Haruki Satomi. SEGA Games itself is a subsidiary of the company we know as “SEGA” at large, known as SEGA-Sammy Holdings. Satomi himself is the son of SEGA-Sammy Holdings’ CEO Hajime Satomi.

The interview attracted much attention for its unexpected level of candor from Haruki Satomi, especially (in my opinion) considering his position within the company. The themes of perceiving fans to be losing trust in SEGA, the anxiety of the future of Japanese gaming industry investment in console gaming, and the nurturing of popular SEGA IPs quite clearly hit a nerve among many. It was the source of spirited discussion on a variety of gaming media outlets and discussion forums. Siliconera’s own original article received a high volume of comments, and the news outlet was fortunate enough to receive a follow-up statement from Haruki Satomi via e-mail, which I’ll reproduce below.

Seeing our fans across the world respond to our recent interview with Famitsu, lets us know we’ve made the right first step in acknowledging who we are and where we want to be. Sega is dedicated to bringing you quality gaming experiences and becoming a brand you love and trust again. – Haruki Satomi, SEGA Games CEO

The original interview also mentioned that Satomi believes SEGA learned from Atlus about making quality games and placing a premium on quality when developing them, and developed the impression from Atlus that there could be a great demand for Japanese console games overseas (especially Asian markets outside of Japan, and Western markets.) He also suggested that there have been some recent SEGA products or decisions of dubious quality that hurt the SEGA brand. Some may recall that back when SEGA’s acquisition of Atlus was first announced, there was some trepidation regarding how heavily the former might attempt to manage the latter or change their identity and behaviors as a company. It seems that the two are instead developing a more synergistic relationship.

We shouldn’t expect any sort of immediate change of course, but it would seem that some wheels could be beginning to turn within the company. Let’s see what happens.

By the way, if I could make an aside: a subsidiary….named SEGA Games? “SErvice GAmes” Games? That’s pretty funny.

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