In a recent interview the chief of Sega West, Mike Hayes, sat down to talk about some of the company’s plans for the future. Some of these plans involved their history with the Nintendo Wii and the comments he had to share gave some interesting hints to how it will shape their future.
When speaking of the House of the Dead franchise, and more specifically the most current release Overkill, Hayes said it was a “big success in Europe”. He also let drop the surprising fact that House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return was still selling at a decent rate. As a result, Sega is “still very keen on the House of the Dead franchise.”
When talk of The Conduit came up, Hayes claimed that it could be called a success. He cited the game as performing solidly in a summer where Wii hardware and software had taken a “dip” sales-wise. Backed up by numbers provided by the V.P. of marketing for Sega of America, Sean Ratcliffe, Hayes pointed out that 300,000 copies of the game had been shipped, with over half of them sold and 100,000 of them going to US gamers.
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However, even Hayes could not deny that Mad World’s lackluster sales were a "disappointment" and he considered several reasons as to why this might have been:
"It could be the consumers didn't like the art style," he said. "It could be the consumers had enough Mature-rated games to play on 360 and PS3 and didn't need a new experience on Wii."
However, despite the mixed success of the games, Hayes was ultimately hopeful that there was still a future in Sega making “hardcore” games for the Wii, ultimately giving this promise:
"You will see more — I wouldn't say Mature as in M — but you will see more definitely more hardcore games from us on the Wii platform."
Since a lot of gamers seem to consider “hardcore” and “M-Rated” to go hand-in-hand, it will be interesting to see what the meaning to that statement will lead to in Sega’s future.
