Sega is Happy With Results of Xbox Game Pass - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 17 February 2021 / 1,767 Views
Sega Europe senior vice president of commercial publishing Anna Downing in an interview with Eurogamer says that Sega is "really happy" with the growth of its games that have been made available on Xbox Game Pass.
"We're really happy with the results and we hope [Microsoft] are too," said Downing. "Ultimately, they wanted quality titles, we wanted to take advantage of a great new opportunity."
Downing mentioned Two Point Hospital as its release on Xbox Game Pass helped the series to grow to over three million players worldwide.
"[It] helped propel the franchise to over 3 million players worldwide," she said. "That's a huge benefit of being on Game Pass, it strengthens the exposure you get to a huge first-party audience.
"That surge in engagement in turn helps to further establish your product in the marketplace. It's great for us and it's great for consumers who get to experience something they may not have engaged with outside of the Game Pass model."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I wonder if that means Sega is willing to port games like Persona and such to Xbox. We've already seen stranger things happen with titles like Yakuza.
Given that they've only ported 1 game (P4G) to Steam and none to Switch, I wouldn't hold my breath.
An Xbox insider recently hinted that MS was in discussions with Sega to bring another big Sega series to Gamepass. He likened the series to Yakuza, hinting it's a series that didn't have a single game on Xbox before it comes to Gamepass. Very likely he was referring to Persona., most other Sega series have at least one game on Xbox already, Persona is one of the few that has none on Xbox.
Maybe Sega finally realized they can make a ton of money bringing Persona to more platforms.
Yep, they actually said that they were planning to port Persona to more platforms after the unexpected success of the P4G steam port, and said they were in negotiations with platform holders about making future Atlus games multiplatform from day one. From their Financial Investor call for the quarter where P4G released on Steam:
Q: “Persona 4 the Golden” has been selling well on Steam, but do you have any plans to sell newly released games on Steam as well?
A: We remastered “Persona 4 the Golden”, a title previously sold on the PlayStation Vita, and released it for sale on Steam this fiscal year. Because of the game’s critical acclaim and its low selling price, sales were much stronger than expected. We will continue to actively promote porting previously released titles to Steam and new platforms. We are also negotiating with platform holders for new games in the future, and we’re considering ways to sell under favorable conditions for each title. Among them are measures such as preparing PC versions of the titles from the beginning, with multi-platform releases in mind.
That's great news! Hopefully we'll start to see more ports later this year then.
Or maybe the next game (if he likened it to Yakuza) will be Judgement. More than likely I'd bet it's Judgement. The Persona series itself hasn't left PlayStation consoles for the most part outside of Golden, but it would be huge if it did.
Nah, he specifically teased that it was a series that MS was negotiating for Gamepass, and a popular one at that. Judgment was already announced for Xbox and it's not a day one Gamepass release. He basically implied that this Sega series would start with a single game on Gamepass, and if enough people played it, Sega would port more later. To me that sounds like it'll probably be a Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal port to start, with a possibility of more games like Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 4 Golden being ported to Xbox in the future if Persona 5 does well.
Also read my above reply to Nintend0rk with Sega saying they were looking into porting past Persona games to more platforms, and them saying they were in negotiations with platform holders to make future Atlus titles multiplat from day one. Seems to suggest that future Atlus games like the rumored Persona 3 remake, Persona 6, and their new IP, Project ReFantasy, could be multiplat from day one.
Oh really?! Hmm... I didn't know Sega was thinking about it officially. That's awesome news. Oh and I missed the news. When was Judgement confirmed for Xbox?
Just a few weeks ago, Sega announced it is getting released on PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Stadia for $40, release is on April 23. Includes all DLC, has some graphical improvements, runs at 60 fps, and has faster load times.
Good looking out! I know the fellow Xbox fans are over the hill with these game launches and announcements. I saw quite a few of them ragging on the PS bunch about them losing their exclusives and such. I honestly don't even think they're "losing" them, but it's being shared like it should. It's not like it was 1st party titles anyway.
Not sure what Sega is gaining with locking franchises like Persona on one platform.
Gamepass at least assures Sega games will get above average attention and guaranteed money from Microsoft. I can't help but wonder if MS is bankrolling many of these ports, just to lower any potential risks. Because MS has done an amazing job with support in recent years.
