Shuji Utsumi, President of SEGA, has revealed during a chat with Nikkei why the Sonic the Hedgehog publisher decided to shelve its ambitious-sounding ‘Super Game‘ project.
“Transmedia’s strategy centres on expanding IP-related businesses into fields other than games, but SEGA is still fundamentally a game-based company,” he said. “And within that game industry, one area that cannot be ignored is [Games as a Service].” Utsumi-san added that SEGA thought it “had the technology to successfully launch a global, large-scale IP that we created from scratch,” believing its investment in a large-scale live service project would see big returns.
However, as we continued our research, we realized that the scale of investment and operations would also grow enormously in line with the scale of the service, and we saw the difficult aspects. As a result, considering the global situation, we decided that taking on this challenge now would be too risky. That is why we canceled the development of Super Game.
The ‘Super Game’ project was announced back in 2021 during a presentation for SEGA’s then-latest fiscal year, where the company planned to launch the game within the next five years. Few details were revealed on the game, but in 2023 SEGA said that the Super Game project would put a major focus on user-generated content. Fast-forward to May this year, and SEGA announced that the game had been cancelled, noting that it is now lowering its focus on free-to-play titles.