March 2021 Interview with Yu Suzuki (Sega Years & Recent Activities)

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Switch

Shenmue analysis at www.phantomriverstone.com
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Yu Suzuki gave an interview for the Sega Hard Historia book earlier this year, which I've translated.

The interview took place in March 2021 and while there's mention of Shenmue, there's nothing specifically about Shenmue IV but Yu does at least give a short comment at the end about what he has been up to at YS Net. So I've put the links below in case anyone missed reading it in the random thoughts thread.

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Interview Part One
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2021/08/mar-2021-yu-suzuki-interview-sega-hard.html

Interview Part Two
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2021/08/march-2021-yu-suzuki-interview-part-two.html

@James Brown kindly provided the source text.
 
Yu-San is really a legend. Still quite humble and aproable unlike some other japanese designers that were quite famous in the 90s that went crazy in the 21 first century. It is also cool this love for tech did not vanish and that he is still into exploring the latest cutting edge technology.
 
Fascinating stuff as always. Yu-san is one of those people I could listen to all day and never be bored with his insight.

YS: I worked very hard on the Sega Saturn. There were no 3D library, and the only ones available were very expensive ones like Silicon Graphics. So I thought there was no choice but to make one myself, and I did. I made the prototype of Shenmue on the Sega Saturn also, but eventually it was moved over to Dreamcast specifications.
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And from what we've seen...it looked absolutely incredible on that system.

But this question and answer fascinated me:



Q: What was the reason why Sega's hardware didn't prevail?

YS: Well, I think that promotion was a factor, of course. I don't know if I should call it "sales strategy", but if you look at something like FF [Final Fantasy], for example, you can see that they have taken great care in developing the series. And more recently, with Ryu ga Gotoku [Yakuza], they have built up the series one year at a time. They take good care of the brand, protect it, strengthen it, and set it on the right track. Companies that rely on IPs for their livelihood, such as Square Enix and Bandai Namco, value their IPs.

If Sega had been more conscious of this aspect of their business, I have a feeling their game business might have been very different. If they had done so, they might have been releasing a Virtua Fighter around this year (laughs).
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I think he is kind of right about this. SEGA had some amazing IPs over the years but they really didn't do much to protect them. Look at Virtua Fighter for example and how it has somewhat faded in the FGC community. Yes, Ultimate Showdown was a nice gift this year but at the same time, it has its issues namely net code.

I do feel like SEGA could have done more to protect their IPs. They've done a relatively good job with Yakuza but there are so many others that fell by the way side.

Anyways, great work as per usual @Switch
 
A spectacular interview like always.

And like always, Yu-san nailed all the issues of Sega (lack of promotion etc.)
Yes Sega could've found an alternative path to continue their console business, like Nintendo did, instead of downgrading to a software only company, losing too much in the process.
 
Beautiful interview, i agree with danielmann, to me Yu-san is one of those people i could listen to all day and never be bored with his insight, with his life's story and everything he did, it is amazing.

He gave up of being a teacher and being a guitarist, i never imagined he wanted this things in his life before joining SEGA.


Suzaku said:
Yu-san nailed all the issues of Sega (lack of promotion etc.)
Yes Sega could've found an alternative path to continue their console business, like Nintendo did, instead of downgrading to a software only company, losing too much in the process.
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I agree with everything Yu Suzuki said on this part. Nintendo is not trying to do the same things Sony and Microsoft are doing, Nintendo don't make the most powerful console and still sells well, especially in Japan Nintendo Switch is a sucess, i think SEGA could have found a alternative path to continue in the console business, and protecting and value more their IPs is one of this things.

Maybe one day SEGA will decide to come back with the console, I hope so, i would support SEGA with this but I don't think SEGA will come back with this, maybe the Dreamcast was really the end of the console part of SEGA's history.

The end of the interview really showed to me that Yu Suzuki is really interested in doing a lot of things, he even said about mobile, would be nice a Shenmue app or a Shenmue mobile game, a Shenmue app where Yu Suzuki can share a lot of things with the fans, where we can play mini games and all sorts of things, i think is a interesting idea.

About the Shenmue mobile game i'm not saying to continue with the story this way, i'm not saying to do Shenmue IV as a mobile game, i'm saying like a different story, for example a story where Fuku-san is the main character or Iwao is the main character, a side story, a story that will add even more to Shenmue, it could be really interesting.

YS NET is not over, in other words Yu Suzuki and the team are doing some things in my opinion, i hope that one of this things is Shenmue IV.

Switch, as always thanks again for the beautiful content.
 
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Sega was at it's best when they were not trying to copy stuff. During the Mega drive time they tried to be more eggy and more "adult" and they did quite well in the west. Then Sony came and copied the Sega approach to be even more adult. But instead finding their style again they tried to copy Sony with the Saturn and the Dreamcast and did not went well. Instead making weird Saturn TV spots with people with weird heads they should tried to promote their japanese games that Sony did not had. It is a pity that the western outlets of Sega did not want to bring that games over. Many great Saturn stuff is lost for non japanese spaeakers.

Sega certainly could have a change with own hardware on their own terms. Not in the leage of Sony and MS but they could still survive with their great und unique ips.
 
9dragons said:
Sega was at it's best when they were not trying to copy stuff. During the Mega drive time they tried to be more eggy and more "adult" and they did quite well in the west. Then Sony came and copied the Sega approach to be even more adult. But instead finding their style again they tried to copy Sony with the Saturn and the Dreamcast and did not went well. Instead making weird Saturn TV spots with people with weird heads they should tried to promote their japanese games that Sony did not had. It is a pity that the western outlets of Sega did not want to bring that games over. Many great Saturn stuff is lost for non japanese spaeakers.

Sega certainly could have a change with own hardware on their own terms. Not in the leage of Sony and MS but they could still survive with their great und unique ips.
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Eh... the Dreamcast had the most-successful opening launch in VG history, in 1999 and it didn't have even remotely the hype that the Ninty Consoles or the PSX had, in the previous decade.

The fact is their failure was money-oriented and they lost tons too-much on the 32X and the Saturn, outside of Japan. That left them severely-behind the 8 ball once the Dreamcast was launched and to break even or turn a big-enough profit and the like, they would've required (probably; I'm no expert) triple the amount of revenue they made in that same timespan, in order to offset any losses they would've taken on the DC.

JSRF, 'mue, Propeller Arena, SoA, Rent-a-Hero No. 1, Segagaga; I don't see, "Sony's style," in any of these titles, in the slightest (well, probably SoA would be the closest thing).
 
In North America yes but in Europe the launch was meh and was even delayed once. then negative press about the problems a british telcom company has with the dreamcast internet did not help either. Then Sega of Europe wasted money in sponsering a random I believe it was a UK soccer team instead of making advertisment for games. In Japan the launch was also not that great due to the problems NEC had with manufactoring chips for the DC. In Japan und Europe lots of potential was wasted with the not so good launches. Sega of Europe also had the great idea with the lifestyle magazine as the offical Dreamcast magazine instead of classic gaming magazine.

Sega of Europe was run by maniacs during the Dreamcast Days. Did the console no good in Europe.

The decentralization with Sega Japan, Sega America and Sega Europe also made Sega weak was a whole.

Sony was smarter than that thid. They kicked out the Americans rather quick that wanted to have some extras for the US Market while the japanese wanted a strategy that worked globaly.

But yes I have heard many good things about the US launch it was legendary. It was really a pity that the Dreamcast was threated so bad in Europe. It was seen here just a stop gap solution for the ps2 and not as a own console. It never had fighting change at least according to the German gaming press.
 
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I was 14 years old when the Dreamcast launched in the UK and even then I couldn't understand why the Dreamcast advertising was kids skimming rocks when 10 seconds of Soul Calibur alone would've done a far better job. After suffering through the Saturn years the hardware and games at launch were phenomenal and no footage of them was used in marketing. A right bloody shame but as 9dragons said typical of Sega in that era not knowing how to market their consoles. Yu Suzuki is bang on point about franchises too, we should have been playing Streets of Rage , Sonic and Shinobi games on the Saturn and beyond but they just let so many franchises sit and rot. Streets of Rage 4 being a million seller in 2020 shows how well respected that brand was amongst gamers but they just sat on it for decades. I'll always love Sega but they are a perfect case study of being on top of the world and throwing it all away through poor management in all territories. For me pushing Tom Kalinske out of Sega US was the death blow for the hardware business. The guy knew how to shift units and what customers wanted but was undermined by SoJ at every turn despite his runaway success in the early 90's.
 
Kalinske was a toy man he knew how to market toys to Americans which was good for the Genesis but gaming changed in the mid 90s it wanted to be more .Kalinke was not the man for this new age. It is also not good to make Sega of Japan the bad guy. They were not better than the US and Europe guys. All were narrow minded not capapable of thinking global.With Maruyama, Kutaragi and Tokunaka Sony had more smarter people at top of Playstation, The managment of Sega was a mess since the mid 90s.
 
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jcjimher said:
The paradox of all this, is that a properly-run Sega maybe wouldn't have greenlighted a project like Shenmue. Which in essence was a niche concept (slow burning, Ultima-inspired detective RPG mostly set in China) made with a Guinness World Record budget.
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Agreed. The Dreamcast failed for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest was Sega’s failure to properly utilize its USP. The budget that went into Shenmue would have been much better spent on two or three online-centric games. Other than PSO, I can’t think of any Dreamcast games that really made the most of the console’s online connectivity, which, from a hardware perspective, was about the only thing the Dreamcast had that the PS2 didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we got Shenmue, but a well-run company would never have put all of its eggs in one basket like Sega did with Shenmue.
 
Thank you very much for gifting us this interview @Switch as it is always a pleasure to listen to such a wise man like Yu Suzuki. It is truly humbling to know that he is still ambitious and yet has a tremendous amount of respect for the industry as a whole. I never knew that Wizardy and Ultima were inspirations for Shenmue. As someone who enjoys western role-playing games (both video and tabletop), that makes me smile.

Also, seeing how he shows such respect to the Ryu Ga Gotoku franchise further cements my belief that the whole Ryu Ga Gotoku versus Shenmue civil war is pureile. This interview only reinforces my want to do everything in my power to support Yu Suzuki's works till the day he dies. Because I feel he is one of the only developers who genuinely care about his fans and making the best video games possible.
 
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