"Personally I would rather Sega focus on themselves and then worry about publishing titles, they need to get their act together before they drag other poor unsuspecting souls through the mud"
I think that they´re doing just that right now! With SEGA Rally Revo and the new NIGHTS game it looks like only one thing to me: they´re turning back the clock and starting to bring us the pure, serious SEGA brand name content we have all craved for all of the time since their near-demise!
I think that what made them unable to give us what we wanted so far, was that they, as developers, didn´t have any good-enough platform to develope the games on. They needed a platform which had enough MOMENTUM from the word go to gain them the financial promise of success they needed to want to give all they have to invest in the best game-talent they´ve got. Otherwise it wouldn´t be worth it for them. I personally don´t regard the PlayStation 2 to have ever been a good platform for SEGA to develope on. Only one to survive on. An enemy-platform turned "friendly" at the mercy of it´s owners.
SEGA had already prior to their exit from hardware market openly expressed that they would never go down with the Dreamcast. They in addition to this publicly ridiculed Sony´s momentary delivery trouble of semi-conductor chips. A most unwise thing to do. They had ridiculed Sony, and now lost to them in the end. Not a good thing to then work for them afterwards - according to the way I see it. This is not about cut-throat business attitudes or not. About friendly getting togethers to become friends instead of enemies. But about company honour, which for SEGA´s part had been severely trampled upon. So the Playstation 2 wasn´t good enough for them. The awesome talent residing at SEGA HQ needed greener pastures. One other thing they needed, and which they didn´t have, was good management.
With the arrival of the Wii from Nintendo, they got a good platform to develope for. Yes, they´ve had theit fights with Nintendo. But Nintendo is still a far better place to be for them. I think I know SEGA that well, and that is my reasons for writing this.
Now, when some types of business people, like the people I believe sat at the top of SEGA management in the SATURN and DREAMCAST days (for so it seems, judging on the wild odyssey they, in a sudden inexplicable impulse, took, with crazy add-ons and over-the-top pricing for them (plus add that people HAD to buy those to play key-franchises being released then), come to the helm of control in any given company, and if they are greedy types, or if they care more for how much they make themselves than to deliver a usefull effort to the company they´re serving - things start going downhill for that company (please excuse the long sentence, but I can´t say it any other way)!
And since they are in control of the ship, so to speak, it doesn´t matter what the developers think. All they can do is go on a strike, which wont exactly help the company, or themselves, or they can...quit. But then they will be unemployed. So most likely they will stay. Disgruntled, unhappy, angry. And WHAT do you think that will do their desire to make good games for us! It will do BAD to it, thats what!!
In such a way I believe that a bunch of suits, wrong to the extreme in their overall outlook and abilities, entered SEGA Management and laid waste to the company through negligent or downright irresponsible management of it. It is all reflected in the aforementioned sudden nonsensical moves by the company, as viewed by outside spectators, and which must prove that it was a management problem alltogether. Nothing else.
If anything can undo a company, nomatter the amount of talent in it, it is BAD management. Period.
Further, over the past years there seems to have been going a kind of re-structuring, awakening, on, which apparently has brought the company closer and closer to a goal of becoming the same as it was before all the bad happened. I think that someone connected to SEGA has had a big hand in turning things around. Turning back the clock...to the old days! Cleaning up, so to speak. And I think that those same people will do anything in their power to keep such bad business people from ever entering SEGA again. For they know, that if they don´t watch out for that kind of situation, including hostile take-overs, SEGA will die. It´s their very reputation which earns them RESPECT. And if they don´t have that, they have nothing. I myself, as a gamer, remember what games a games company make which are good. So do you people. We all do. So before SEGA can return to the old days they must make sure that everything inside the production rooms of the company is working flawlessly. Then, and only then, will it all be like it was.