Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not get carried away
Maybe GC-era Sega with Sonic and Super Monkey Ball.
Their modern catalog is very PS these days I think. Totally different place.
Yeah TBF they do have a lot of their stuff on PS4 nowadays with Yakuza, Sakura Taisen, Virtual-On and Persona if you extend it to Atlus. But when it comes to Japan Nintendo seems to be the dominant force especially going forward, and all of those games are pretty Japan-centric so they may actually be a better fit on Nintendo's platform IMHO.
It's also one of the reasons I think MS would be a better fit than Sony: not only do MS need new strong IP more than Sony, but with mobile gaming being so big in Asia and a lot of SEGA's stuff having a primary appeal to that market (again, like Yakuza), streaming over Xcloud would probably help those games reach a lot of players they otherwise wouldn't. They might start testing that right now with porting Yakuza to Xbox, see how those games do in places like South Korea over Xcloud for example.
The chief benefit I could see SEGA bringing to Sony would be in filling out their quirkier, AA-style games more timely and persistently. Japan Studio dropped the ball so hard on that front and a lot of the IP Sony once had to cover those type of games, like Wipeout or Echochrome or Puppeteer, the IPs are either dead or the studios behind them are gone.
I could imagine SEGA AM2 making a really cool new Wipeout at
least on par with F-Zero GX back on the Gamecube, for example, and at a very good budget. SEGA's IP would compliment Sony's more cinematic, epic Hollywood-like AAA games tbh, but in Sony's case I don't think there's as big a need for them ATM, unless we see them skip out on 2nd-party deals with indies or pass on Housemarque. Them shutting down Japan Studio would open a big door for someone like SEGA tho provided they aren't already with MS, or are just in a position where they don't need to consider being picked up by one of the Big 3 anymore.
By the time Dreamcast had come out Sega had shit all over its fanbase with garbage add ons and consoles like the 32x, Sega CD and the Saturn. The Dreamcast was a fantastically designed console but like I said, too little too late. By that point most people could care less about the Dreamcast. Especially with the ps2 juggernaut so close to release.
Sadly this is very accurate. People are underestimating just how much SEGA pissed away their fanbase in the 32X/Saturn years in the West (and then in Japan by rushing Dreamcast when Saturn was still doing well over there). I mean, you can see some of that even to this day with people who still feel betrayed by their decisions at that time who were staunch supporters. Then consider that many of them just went over to the Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft camps after SEGA left hardware.
It's probably a big reason why they've been struggling a good while since becoming a 3rd-party; a lot of their earlier fanbase felt jaded, and if they went on to make new friends or have kids, etc. they probably didn't push SEGA stuff onto them because they had written SEGA off by then or didn't prioritize them anymore. Sometimes it even feels like companies like SNK have more goodwill towards them than SEGA because, yeah, the Neo-Geo sold a pittance in terms of systems, but SNK never really betrayed their fanbase, either. Their biggest mistakes honestly was the Hyper Neo-Geo 64, and they killed it before it could do any damage. Besides, that was an arcade system so only operators were affected and they likely were okay to forgive because the original Neo Geo was still doing so well for them. And they consistently retained their IP like KOF and Metal Slug to a high standard (outside of the "decent" PS2 3D KOF games :S).
So while a company like SEGA had a much bigger rise (in terms of industry clout compared to, say, SNK or Capcom), they also had a
much bigger fall and I don't think they've fully recovered to this day. I mean in terms of overall fanbases and communities I see more excitement over SNK and Capcom stuff (particularly Capcom) these days than SEGA, I mean just look at anticipation for RE3 Remake compared to, say, the next Yakuza game or recent Sakura Wars game. And a lot of that has to do with one being more mainstream, for sure, but I think if SEGA did a better job not pissing away a huge chunk of its fanbase in the late '90s they'd be getting more natural attention for new releases. Oh and dropping the ball with Sonic has also definitely hurt.
That said, the PSO2 beta received nothing but praise and is probably the most visible SEGA has been among the general gaming community in
years, so they can certainly command that type of attention. But PSO2 is a case of them giving fans both current and who may've turned away a long time ago, something they've
actually wanted, is
high-quality, related to a classic IP and is grand in
scale with what big competition is offering these days (in most ways, anyway. I guess you can argue the visuals aren't as good as FF XIV or Monster Hunter World on a technical level, but the artistic quality more than makes up for it IMHO).
That's what SEGA needs to be doing more of, because there's no reason they can't be enjoying similar levels of success as Capcom, Square-Enix, or other major Japanese game devs these days. And I mean that not just in terms of healthy sales, but general mindshare and appeal to core fanbase with strong games in classic IP that can compare with best efforts from rival studios. Make the next 3D Sonic
legitimately great again, try making a serious fighting game again (not even Virtua Fighter; just do it like SEGA and Sonic All-Stars was and throw tons of SEGA characters in it building off the Virtua Fighter engine, like Fighters Megamix did in its day), etc.
They could finally make up for all those horrible business decisions from 32X and onward.
