SEGA fans have been really active on petitions these days. After all, community asked for Ryo Hazuki on SASRT (thanks to Sumo Digital’s Inititative) and now he’s finally there, right? It is clear that there’s still a lot of support to SEGA and its beloved IPs from the fans, and sometimes games they want aren’t on platforms of their like, it becomes difficult for consumers to get all titles. Multiplatform releases are sometimes difficult to happen, namely because of exclusive deals, funding, or sometimes it doesn’t seem profitable to a company to release a title without a considerable amount of players on it, etc.; which is totally reasonable since sales have to happen and cared about in order to be in business.
Today NeoGAF user TaroYamada, brought back a social network petiton to ask SEGA for more PC port titles available for consumers. We weren’t approached as he states in the forum thread, but We do listen to what community has to say, and we will gladly spread the word about it! You can also find the petition and sign it here. You can also read TaroYamada‘s NeoGAF post over here.
- It’s targeting games that are a perceived lower risk, the initial suggestions are: Vanquish, Bayonetta and Virtua Fighter 5. Please note that even if you disagree with the initial suggestions, a massive part of this effort is about adjusting SEGA’s perceptions of what the PC market is open to concerning their content.
- Within the next 24-48 hours I’ll have this up on SEGANerds, SEGABits and SEGAShiro. That’s a grassroots thing and it’s pretty much where my connections begin and end with the press. If you run your own sites and you support this petition, or if you know press who might be interested in this petition give it a forward, spread the word if you don’t mind.
- Outside of that, please tweet, revive the #SEGAPCPorts hashtag and get this out to your followers.
What is clear is that PC has the bigger amount of SEGA consumers these days, due to titles as Football Manager, Total War Rome, Company of Heroes, SASRT, and Japan only: PSO2. They are selling and keeping SEGA alive! So… why there aren’t many titles for this platform yet? It is also true that in the past titles such as Sonic R, Panzer Dragoon, Billy Hatcher, etc. didn’t sell that much units on PC, but thanks to Steam as a powerhouse carrier on digital distribution the scene is quite different now. SEGA should totally take the chance to get all the pie.
Besides, there are plenty advantages for PC: low cost for pusblishing, Steam Sales boost users on games, games will be always on steam libraries, PC users are always hungry for games, games can look prettier cause of hardware upgrades, SEGA has already some remastered games and those just need to be ported.
It is also noted that user TaroYamada is asking for Bayonetta, Vanquish, and VF5. But there’s a problem with the 1st two titles, since those IPs are splited up with Platinum Games, and Ninty has some rights over Bayonetta now, permissions and negotiations would be long and tiring. So I think some other titles should be up for consideration instead. Here’s a list of some titles already remasterd or digitally released that could be nice to get ported on PC:
Panzer Dragoon Orta, JSRF, and Otogi, since they already run on PC type hardware due to Xbox release. REZ HD, c’mon it would be a waste not getting this on PC! Monster World IV, cause its awesome. Virtua Striker series, cause Europe and Latin America love soccer, and the arcades were already popular on the regions, also, all those Football Manager sales don’t mean anything or what? also a FIFA world cup is coming this year, why not use the hype to boost those sales? Just to name a few.
To end this report just a few suggestions to people tweeting on this campaign:
- Please, don’t outrage on the phrases you tweet or text on social networks about this, not everyone does it, but some users do. It is clear that you want your voice to be heard, but remember that there are people who work at SEGA’s community team, they are people too and are there to help you in getting your message to the proper people, final word does not rely on the community team, so it really helps their day and the campaign if you are polite on your say, right?
- Reach community sites properly, they are nice people who are really passionate about SEGA too, so they will do what they can to help if they see it as a correct option. Try reaching Radio Sega, Sonic Retro, Sega-Addicts, SegaBits, Sega Driven, Sega Shiro, TSSZ, Sega Galactico, sega otaku, sega 16, sega world italia, just to name a few, on their twitter accounts.
- Please don’t outrage if this doesn’t work out entirely, it takes time, and sometimes other negotiations need to be done first for things like this to happen.
As a Steam User, I would love to see this happen one day. So what titles, that are in fact reliable, would you like to see get ported on PC?
