During an interview with MCV, SEGA had revealed that they have parted ways with newly formed studio, Interior Night. Last year, Interior Night formed in late 2017 with former members of Quantic Dream, the studio behind Heavy Rain. SEGA had announced a publishing deal with Interior Night in early 2018 as part of their SEGA Searchlight program.
But as of last week, SEGA Europe and Interior Night ended their deal due to strategic reasons. SEGA Europe’s Head of Content Bobby Wertheim, who is also part of SEGA Searchlight, gave a small reasoning on why they departed from Interior Night.
Sega did announce a partnership with Interior Night. Interior Night is a really talented studio, headed up by Caroline Marchal who is amazing and really experienced but Sega decided not to continue with that project. We have a lot of respect for the studio and I’m still really good friends with several people on the team.
Whether or not it was the game Interior Night is producing was not to SEGA’s liking was made unclear. Wertheim then goes on to talk about the risks they take with the Searchlight program.
The great thing about Sega Searchlight is basically saying: we’re willing to take a risk and try something new, and we don’t have interactive narrative games in our portfolio. And that was a real new challenge for Sega. In the end, not every project is going to go as well as I personally would like. So it’s the end of the relationship but we’re just working hard to find the next big thing.
Interior Night was founded in November 2017 with the notion to create “innovative and accessible narrative games”. The studio is based in London.
[Source: MCV]