Sega CCO Nagoshi Speaks About Company’s Future

By
Tristan Oliver
– February 27, 2013
“I’d like to ensure that console games don’t lose their luster” Toshihiro Nagoshi, the main man behind the celebrated Yakuza franchise and now Sega’s Chief Creative Officer, was recently interviewed...

“I’d like to ensure that console games don’t lose their luster”

Toshihiro Nagoshi, the main man behind the celebrated Yakuza franchise and now Sega’s Chief Creative Officer, was recently interviewed by Japanese game publication Famitsu.  The interview was translated by Polygon.

For those who have been concerned about Sega’s transition to digital titles and that may mean for big budget boxed fare, Nagoshi did his best to assure in the interview that Sega will do its best to support both physical and digital media:

I’d like to ensure that console games don’t lose their luster.  Behind that, I suppose, is the concern that they will, indeed, become a thing of the past if we don’t do something. This isn’t new, but in a lot of different ways, the ‘social’ keyword is seeping into all parts of the console business. So part of me sees the console scene as endangered, something we have to act to support. I feel the need to keep that scene active so it doesn’t get shunted to the side, and even at this moment, I’m busy thinking of how we’ll keep titles like Yakuza going.

On that note, Nagoshi also discussed the success behind Phantasy Star Online 2, and the apparent internal struggle to make PC the lead platform for the sequel:

I see possibilities with F2P across the industry; it all depends on what you do with it, but it took this team to show us what we could accomplish with this property. No company is ever unanimous when it makes decisions; there’s always doubt over how much you can trust someone who swears to you that they have a vision and they can make it happen. Launching Yakuza may have been a bit like that, but this is a large-scale online game, so the longer you run it, the more money it’ll cost us. PSO2 certainly taught Sega how hard it is to establish an online game and run it as a stable business, and I think Sega’s gained some major assets through that experience over the past year.

Nagoshi added that the recent acquisition of Relic will enable, in his words, “our strategy for tackling this genre,” referring to the real-time strategy genre.   He also had a vision for what Sega and that unique logo should represent: “Things that seem crazy at first, but really surprise you when they take form.”

You can read the translated interview at the above cited link.