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Sega has been struggling in recent years and has now decided to cancel some of its projects, the biggest one being Hyenas, its upcoming hero-shooter. Hyenas aimed to hit it big in the already saturated shooter market and was planned for release sometime in late 2023 on the PC, PlayStation, and Xbox before being canceled. If genre-defining games like Overwatch 2 are struggling, this does not really come as a shock.
Hyenas was initially announced way back in June 2022 and presumably has been in development for a few years prior to that. The studio working on the game was no slouch either, as Creation Assembley has had its fair share of successes in the past. Notable works from the company include Alien: Isolation and Total War. Yet the project still wasn’t hitting its stride. Neither internally, nor in terms of fan reception.
Why Hyenas Just Wasn’t Good Enough
Sega’s hero-shooter Hyenas used to let players pick their favorite hero from a roster, compete online with other players, and try to become the best robber around. The derivative nature of the game resulted in a subpar experience. At least according to those who took part in its closed beta that took place from August to September of this year. Sega had already voiced its opinions on how difficult it was to make a game like Hyenas work, and it seems the devs bit off more than they could chew.
Originally, Sega believed that Hyenas would do around $900 million in lifetime sales, but once the game made it into the hands of players, that opinion quickly changed. Fans of hero-shooters called it uninspired, lifeless, and even cringy. The trailers on YouTube and the closed beta mostly got negative responses, so it was in the best interest of Sega to hit the breaks. Reminiscent of what Rocksteady had to do with Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
Sega Canceled Hyenas & Other Games As Well
Other unannounced projects that were being worked on under the Sega umbrella have also been left by the wayside. This shouldn’t be too harrowing for most, since these titles weren’t even developed enough to be announced.
In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe. The resulting action will be to cancel ‘Hyenas’ and some unannounced titles under development. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development.
We expect to record losses of approximately 14.3 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, but there are no changes to the full-year consolidated operating results forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 at this time. In the consumer area, several new titles, including mainstay IPs, will be released from the third quarter onwards and the amusement machine sales area, where the prize category is performing well, and the animation and toy area are performing solidly.
Sega’s Public Restructuring Notice
While Sega is definitely still going through tough times, it’s not all doom and gloom from here on out. There are still phenomenal IPs the company holds and has countless other projects in the works.
