Interesting Interview

At Famitsu.com's international site, there's a pretty good interview on one of Sega of Japan's members who I'd say had a big hand in Sega's decision to leave the console business. This interview is on SoJ's Corporate Chief Operationg Officer Tetsu Kayama. He also mentiones of some fairly surprising news on the upcoming VF4. Here are 2 passages that immediately caught my attention:


<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>

Famitsu (F): What's the reason behind bringing the latest version of Sega's star series, Virtua Fighter 4, to a non-Sega console?

Mr. Kayama (K): The reason why we announced Virtua Fighter 4 is that we really wanted to release something that people will be sure to value and say, "I always knew Sega's great!" We will go head to head with Tekken on equal footing and show gamers Sega's ability. I know Tekken sold four million copies all over the world, but we believe Virtua Fighter ranks at the top of 3D fighting games both in name and reality. It's this kind of enthusiasm that we're going to take with us to try to grab the No.1 position in every category.

<hr></blockquote>


<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>

Famitsu (F):Virtua Fighter 4 is a port from the arcade (NAOMI2) version. Interestingly enough, there was a rumor that Sega would develop boards for arcades that don't employ Sega's architecture.

Kayama (K): Although I can't disclose the details now, we are just about to reach an agreement with certain companies about the prospect of Sega developing arcade boards based on their consoles' architectures.

<hr></blockquote>

Whoa... February 24th can't come any sooner! This should be an announcement with huge implications.

Anyway... the rest of this interview can be found by going to the URL listed below:

http://us.famitsu.gameloft.com/dn/special/01/kayama01.html

Kruza






<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Kruza on 2/8/01 05:36 PM.</FONT></P>