مقابلة رائعة مع Mike Hayes رئيس SEGA WEST يتكلم فيها عن استرتيجياتهم لسنة 2010/11

المقابلة كانت مع Computer&Videogames ونزل اليوم ال Part1 لها واللي أتكلم فيها عن عدة امور منها ياكوزا , بلاتينوم حيمز , سونك , ناتال وموف , رأيه عن أداء العابهم في السوق حاليا , الاتجاه اللي حيركزوا عليه السنة هذي .. الخ

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=239411

نبدأ بالتفصيل
* note : الترجمة مش حرفية

How would you characterise Sega's line-up for 2010? What's different to preceding years?
The key development over the next 12 months for us will be to build on the success we've seen on Wii and DS, as you'd expect - but our main area of focus will be to increase the market share we have on 360 and PS3. That's absolutely our single-minded goal for this year.


Aliens vs Predator has thundered along in the right direction. The pre-orders were the highest we've ever had for a core Sega game. Bayonetta had excellent reviews and it's gone to plan. The great thing about Bayonetta is that it's a product that sells well in Japan as well as North America, as well as Europe. They're very rare.

Overall, Bayonetta's shipped well over a million units globally. Again, as a great core game, that gives us something to build upon. Going forward, if you look at our 360 and PS3 portfolio, we've announced Vanquish from Platinum Games - a third-person shooter. We're getting ready to grow our share of the PS3 and 360 market.

If you look at Sega in Europe, we're around the fifth or sixth biggest publisher - and a lot of that is driven by Football Manager, Total War and Mario & Sonic, Sonic and Sega IP like House Of The Dead. And we've had a lot of success with DS. But if you look at our market share on 360 and PS3, we're closer to No.8, and we need to bring that up.

أنقر للتوسيع...

- استراتيجيتنا للسنة الجديدة اننا نبني على النجاحات اللي حققناها على الWii والDS , لكن هدفنا وتركيزنا الرئيسي هو اننا نحاول نكبر الماركت-شير تبعنا على اجهزة الHD
- الينز Vs. بريدتور كانت اكثر لعبة Core كسرت حاجز الPre-orders للشركة
- بايونيتا ناجحة وماشية على الPlan والجميل انها من الالعاب اللي تبيع بشكل جيد في كل مكان اليابان امريكا واوربا وهذا الشي نادر , بايونيتا شحنت فوق المليون نسخة , وكلعبة core قوية هذا يخلينا نبني بهذا الاتجاه
- نحن اعلنا already عن Vanquish وانطلاقا منها احنا بنستعد اننا نكبر الماركت-شير تبعنا للPS3 وال360
- اذا نظرت للسوق الاوروبية نحن في المرتبة الخامسة/السادسة على مستوى الماركت واغلب هذي النسبة تروح لالعاب مثل فوتبول مانجر , توتال وور , سونك , ماريو اند سونك , وبعض الIPs زي ذا هاوس او ذا ديد , لكن اذا نظرت للماركت-شير تبعنا على ال 360 والPS3 فنحن بالترتيب الثامن ونحتاج اننا نرفع من مستوانا من الناحية هذي

Do you think Platinum Games' natural home is on PS3 and 360?
I think so. I guess there's a reference to MadWorld there. Critically it got a lot of acclaim, but commercially it wasn't the success we wanted it to be. Clearly that was a mismatch with the Wii audience - particularly in terms of the amount of cross-ownership between Wii and the other home platforms. If you're going to play a mature-rated game, you're going to get your 360, PC or PS3 out to do so. But you can't knock us for having a go.

We were brave in that area - but the reality is, Platinum Games is such a cutting-edge developer they need the PS3 or 360 to realise what they actually want to do. You saw that with Bayonetta - it was a very high-quality standard. Vanquish will push the envelope even further. Platinum are definitely more at home on those platforms. But we were thrilled when they tried to do a mature thing on Nintendo. House Of the Dead was seen as a more credible IP with the Nintendo audience - maybe even more fun.

We also have a very good next-gen team in Japan, with Yakuza and Nagoshi's team. He has huge success with Yakuza in Japan. The challenge for us is how to take that brand far more seriously [in the West]. That combined with our external relationships with the likes of Rebellion and Gearbox and our internal studios leaves me confident we can move up on PS3 and Xbox 360.

أنقر للتوسيع...

عند سؤاله حول ما اذا كان بلاتينوم جيمز كأستديو متلائم أكثر مع اجهزة الHD
- أعتقد ذلك , على سبيل المثال ماد وورلد حصلت على تقاييم حيدة لكنها كانت فاشلة بالماركيت , وفي حالة مالكي اجهزة الWii وال HD فأنهم عندما يريدوا لعب العاب M-Rated فأن وجهتهم اجهزة الHD او الPC
- في حقيقة الامر بلاتينوم جيمز مطوريين متمكنين و يحتاجون اجهزة الHD ليستطيعوا ادراك ما يمكنهم فعله بالشكل المطلوب , رأينا بايونيتا كvery high-quality standard ومع فانكويش حندفع بشكل اقوى في هذا الاتجاه
- ومن جهة اخرى عندنا فريق قوي باليابان وهو فريق ناجوتشي وياكوزا واللي حققت نجاح كبير باليابان والتحدي بالنسبة لنا اننا نخلي الفرنشايز ناجح بالغرب , لدينا ايضا علاقات مع استديوهات مستقلة مثل ريبليون و جير بوكس , واستديوهاتنا الداخلية اولدت الثقة لدي بأننا نتحرك باتجاه الPS3 وال360

Yakuza's huge news on CVG. There's obviously a massive appetite for it out there...
For our fanbase - and it's really big in the United States in particular - we at Sega are disappointed that we didn't introduce Yakuza 3 earlier to market. That was probably an error on our part.

There was a lot of disappointment from Sega fans that we didn't have that on our release schedule last year. What I would say in our defence is that it has approximately 2.5 million Japanese [language] characters to translate in it. It's a huge translation job. That's about a million English characters.

أنقر للتوسيع...

بخصوص ياكوزا
- في كمية كبيرة من الفانس لياكوزا بالولايات المتحدة واحنا محبطين اننا ما قدمنا Yakuza 3 بشكل مبكر , هذا كان خطأنا من الماضي
- كان في الكثير من الفانس المحبطيين بأننا ما جدولنا اصدار اللعبة خلال العام الماضي , لكن كل اللي اقدر اقوله في موقع المدافع هو ان اللعبة تحتوي على 2.5 مليون كاركتر ياباني محتاجة تترجم وهو عمل ترجمة ضخم ويقدر بحوالي مليون كاركتر انجليزي .

What are your plans for your classic IP going forward?
It's important that on our old IP that is respected, we need to deliver a good product. And in some instances we have done that - look back at when we re-did Sega Rally. It scored well and was moderately successful commercially. But then with other great franchises like Golden Axe we didn't produce a great game at all.

Going forward, if we're going to look at any existing IP to bring out the locker, we have to make sure we get the quality to a level we now expect. I'm not saying which IP it would be - a Streets Of Rage, a Crazy Taxi, whatever. What we have to do now is build something that is 85 per cent plus [rated]. We can't just get away with PR.

I'm sure a lot of our readers will be pleased to hear you say that...
We've learned that lesson the good way but also the hard way.

أنقر للتوسيع...

عند سؤاله حول خططهم لاستخدام IPs كلاسيكية بالمستقبل
- من المهم جدا بالنسبة للIPs اللي لها احترامها انها تتقدم بالشكل المطلوب , بالنظر للخلف تجد اننا استطعنا ان نقدم تجربة رائعة من SEGA RALLY Revo لكن بنفس الوقت ما قدمنا لعبة جيدة ابدا مع فرنشايز قوي زي Golden Axe
- عندما نقرر اننا نستخدم IP كلاسيكي من الان فصاعدا يجب ان نتأكد من انها تكون على المستوى المأمول مهما كان الIP ستريت اوف ريج ؟ كريزي تاكسي ؟ مهما يكون يجب اننا نطور شي يحدود السكور 85 وطالع , مانقدر نتهرب بعد الان بمجرد كلام PR واضاف :
We've learned that lesson the good way but also the hard way.

Talking of classic Sega IP, we've seen the new Sonic game...
Doesn't it look great?

For a 2D fan - yes, it does. What was the thinking behind its creation? Bizarrely, it's a next-gen, old-school title...
The thing with Sonic you need to understand is that there are different parts of the Sonic family. This is how we're building the whole strategy. In one corner you've got Mario & Sonic franchise, in the next you've got Sonic The Hedgehog. Then you've got the All-Stars - that's pretty much everybody. Then you've got something we haven't seen for a while, which is like Sonic Heroes, multiplay-type game.

Those are the four areas we want to develop. Interestingly, each of those is going to have different audiences. With the Sonic The Hedgehog brand, we have a lot of people who are legacy fans in a way. And that's where the new game came from: Wouldn't you like to play in the style of your old Genesis or Megadrive but in the beauty of re-enhanced high definition? It doesn't mean we won't tap into the All-Star games, or we won't take Sonic in other directions in future.

Why make it episodic rather than a standalone New Super Mario Bros-style release?
Kind of a mixture of reasons. A lot of it is the whole digital entertainment part. We like everybody else are trying to learn how best to deliver entertainment in the future to consumers. This was a relatively low cost part of Sonic. We wanted to see how it was received via that delivery.

For something like Sonic 4, the consumer will often be quite core. They play a lot of multiplayer, a lot of downloads off XBLA and PSN. We're feeling our way if we're perfectly honest, but it seems to make sense.

أنقر للتوسيع...

حول سونك
- علينا ان نفهم اولا ان هناك شرائح متعددة من اللاعبيين والفانس لسونك و هذا اللي حنبني عليه استراتيجيتنا
- فمن جهة لدينا Sonic The Hedgehog الكلاسيك ومن جهة ماريو اند سونك ومن جهة All Stars ومن جهة اخرى العاب ال3D او ال Multi-Type Game كما وصفها
- هذي اربع زوايا نريد اننا نبني من خلالها , على سبيل المثال بالنسبة لسونك ذا هيدجوج كور فرنشايز لدينا اللعبة الجديدة واللي حيفضل يلعبها القانس القدامى و اللي يبغوا تجربة ذات حس كلاسيكي للعبة في طابع HD , لكن هذا لا يعني اننا لن نتجه بدايركشنز جديدة للسلسلة مستقبلا
وعند سؤاله حول نقطة كون Sonic 4 عبارة عن ديجيتال كونتنتس وليست كلعبة ريتيل
- نحن نريد ان نجرب التوجه الجديد في الماركتنج واللي يساعد على خفض التكاليف ونرى كيف ستكون النتائج

EA and Activision have established their iterative franchises. What are Sega's - or is your strategy different?
I would struggle to think of any publisher that has a different strategy at the moment. You have to focus on the IP which is your strongest and do as much as you can to prove and enhance that. To answer your question, our big IPs are Football Manager, Total War, Sonic, Mario & Sonic, Virtua Tennis and, now, Aliens. Obviously we have AvP, Gearbox's [Aliens] game and whatever else we may do.

They're not necessarily all annual, but they'll probably [come out] at least one every two years. We're certainly not trying to over-do Sonic - we need to plan that roadmap.

The challenge in the industry at the moment is that new IP is very expensive and very risky. We'll certainly take risks with Vanquish and some announcements we've got coming at E3, which will be 2011 projects - again in that core area. If it takes $20 million to create a major Xbox 360 game, we'll do that, but we'll also [reinvest in our core franchises]. EA, Activision, Ubi, us - everybody's moving down a similar path of looking inwards at existing IP. It's not that we're spending less, we're just spending money in less risky areas.

That being so, we're also interested in any of the new applications - we're noticing [PS3 Move]. Obviously as and when DS2 and Wii 2 and everything else comes in, we'll step up that investment.

We're really encouraged by what Sony and Microsoft say about trying to reach the mass market. Let's call it the PS2 market. To get those players back onto those platforms would be great. Hopefully, Natal and [Move] could go some way to achieving that.

أنقر للتوسيع...

- نعتقد ان كل شركة هذا الجيل يجب ان تركز على فرنشايزاتها الناجحة , ونحن على سبيل المثال لدينا Football Manager, Total War, Sonic, Mario & Sonic, Virtua Tennis ,والان Aliens .
- مش كلهم بالضروري يكونوا سنويا , نحن لا نريد ان نستخدم سونك اكثر من اللازم بل علينا ان نضع خارطة طريق نمشي عليها
- التحدي الحقيقي هذا الجيل هو بناء العاب جديدة لان فيها مخاطرة , ولكن بالتأكيد سنخاطر . أعلنا عن فانكويش وسنعلن عن عدة العاب جديدة بالE3 القادم من الالعاب المخطط اصدارها ب2011 , اذا كان المشروع الماجور على الHD يكلف 20 مليون دولار فلن نتردد .
- ايضا نحن سنكون مستعدين لدخول اي ابواب تسلية جديدة مثل الموف والناتال

Do Natal and Move represent a chance to launch new IP that can run and run?
I think Natal and the Sony Motion Controller allow us to do things that are more about multi, party gaming.

In a way, it's a move away potentially from the core. That's what we're actually getting good at. Mario & Sonic is a multi-party game - but it's actually good fun. Microsoft and Sony are telling us that actually, we don't have to spend $20 million to get things consumers like, because you can approach things with games that are repetitive fun - easy to pick up and pass around. That's where we could either use old Sega IP or come up with new ideas.

The challenge for both first parties is to make sure the installed base of these devices is as high as they've claimed it will be.

If you look at how many Xbox 360s or PS3s there in Europe - let's say 12 million of each - if they get an attached rated of 12-and-a-half per cent with these [motion] devices, that's 2.5 million consumers for us to go after. If ten per cent of those buy our games, that's 250,000. How much money can you realistically spend on development for that audience?

But Microsoft and Sony are talking very big numbers. If they can achieve that, it will make these devices very viable. Could sales of Natal hit 50 per cent of those current installed base? We think the price point will be very attractive. 360 has a long way to go with a lot more hardware - so, for example, if they were to bundle Natal, it's a home run if they can afford to do that. I would imagine both Microsoft and Sony are going to spend big development money to make these devices very attractive.

We'll certainly be supporting both. We have several games on both [Move] and Natal that you will see from around the end of this year and into 2011.

Have you seen any problems with Project Natal's lag?
This is funny - it's a case of first party being damned if they do, damned if they don't. As publishers, what we want is a very close early relationship on these devices. And all credit to Microsoft and Sony, they've given us early development kits.

So if they're giving us something that's obviously rough and ready, we can't then criticise it and say: 'It's not perfection.' You can see the improvements in revised versions of what's come out. It's our point of view that most if not all of what's been promised on both is going to be delivered.

We asked our Japanese studio to create something for [Natal] which we'll show off at E3. They had a brilliant prototype up and running within six weeks. I mean a genuinely entertaining prototype you could just play.

أنقر للتوسيع...

بأختصرها
- سيجا ترى ان الموف والناتال ينفعوا مع الميني جيمز تايب اكثر
- الشركة حتشوف البوتنشال تبعها مابين العاب كلاسيكية واخرى جديدة
- هناك عدة العاب قيد التطوير حاليا على الموق والنتال واللي حتصدر نهاية السنة وبداية 2011 .
- طلبنا من استديوهاتنا في اليابان انهم يطوروا شيء على النتال , فأستطاعوا انهم بقدموا نموذج رائع للعبة ممتعة خلال ستة اسابيع فقط




الPart2 من المقابلة جينزل بكره ويتكلم عن

Check back tomorrow for the second and final part of our interview with Mike Hayes, in which he'll discuss E3, 3D gaming and the tricky MMO market...

أنقر للتوسيع...

إذا فعلاً إلي يقوله صح شيء ممتاز و توجه ناجح مع الوقت بيبين أكثر و أكثر ..
انتظر كلامة عن الـ MMO

اللون الأزرق >____>

Part2
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=239570

حترجمها لاحقا اذا لقيت شي مهم

OK ححط أهم النقاط اللي طلعت بيها من بعد قراءة الPart2

- لمح لامكانية بورتات اركيد للنتال والموف زي العاب الشوتر (من غير ما يأكد شيء )
- وعلق على نقطة العاب ال3D (افاتار ستايل) وقال انه يرى انه شي ثوري بكل تأكيد لكنهم مايفكروا حاليا بانهم يعملوا مشروع بهذا الاتجاه حتى يتأكدوا انهم ممكن يطلعوا مشروع ناجح من هذي الناحية
- اما تعليقه بخصوص الMMO قال انه الاحتمالية اننا نشتغل على واحدة من IPs اللي نمتلكها حاليا واردة وذكر على سبيل المثال سلسلة TOTAL WAR لكنه بنفس الوقت وصف سوق الMMO كسوق جدا تنافسي واحنا نفضل اننا نهتم بالCore جيمز اكثر ونخليها ناجحة
- ذكر الاحتمالية لسيكويلز لكل من بايونيتا , الينز Vs. بريدتور , الفا بروتوكول ونقدر نحقق نجاح مع فانكويش
- حول سؤاله حول دعم الWii قال انتظر E3 لكنه قال انها ما حتكون من العاب ال M-rated
- حول سؤاله حول سلسلة TOTAL WAR قال احنا عندنا المزيد عشان نقدمه حول الحقب التاريخية لكننا حاليا بنسلك مسلك مع توجهات جديدة للسلسلة لكن ما اقدر اقول ايش هي بالضبط , نحن نريد اننا نقسم الشغل في عدة اتجاهات
- حول سؤاله حول توقعاته لحجم معرض الE3 القادم , قال نحن يجب ان نكون متواجدين وحنتعامل معاه بشكل جيد هذي السنة , لكننا نبدي تخوفنا حول التكاليف المتوجبة للتواجد بالشكل المطلوب لكن نحن نعلم اننا يجب ان نتواجد , هناك الاطنان من المنتجات اللتي نود عرضها , عدم وجودنا هناك هو السخف بعينه , هل يمككنا اننا نتكلف كل هذي الاموال وصرفها بشكل جيد للترويج عن منتجاتنا ؟ بالطبع نعم