Sega of America Q&A
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Q: Now, you mentioned your push to cut deals with Western publishers. You also mentioned Sonic. One of the things I have found really interesting and surprising is that whole BioWare/Sonic role-playing game deal. Can you talk about how that came about? That surprised a lot of people.
A: I'd love to, as it's one of my pet subjects. I'm a huge fan of the BioWare guys. I worked with them in the past, and it was one of the best experiences of my career. So, when I came to Sega, I was very, very keen to work with those guys again. We've also made no secret of the fact that we are very keen to increase the quality of the Sonic franchise moving forward.
Therefore, there was a degree of reinvention that was really called for. We felt that it was time to shake things up a bit, to do some really new stuff, and to do that with partnering with some of the best people and the genres in the world. So, the BioWare guys and us started to talk maybe 18 months ago, and this is what came out of it. And we're really excited about it. The DS is the fastest-growing gaming platform in the world. It's the only gaming platform that you can say is genuinely successful in every major gaming territory right now on a global basis. And RPGs are one of the leading genres there are.
So, we don't want to make it a dumb game, but we've talked about it being "my first RPG." We want it to appeal to traditional Sonic fans, but also traditional role-playing fans, and this whole new generation of handheld game players who are adopting the DS right now.
And a small bit concerning Obsidian's Aliens RPG:
Q: Well, back to Western publishers. How are the two Aliens games coming along?
A: Again, neither will be shown at the E3 this year, but it's an incredibly exciting project. We're working very closely with [film studio 20th Century] Fox to make the launch of those games feel actually like a new Aliens movie is coming out, because the investment and the passion that's going into them from Gearbox, Obsidian, and from Sega itself are just really, really cool and very, very exciting. But I probably don't want to say anything more than that at this point in time.
