SEGA excited about unique game at new UK studio

[Shin-Ra]

Sega building 'unique' Vita game at new studio

Publisher opens its third UK games developer

Sega has today opened its third UK studio, formed from key staff that headed up the now-defunct Sega Racing Studio.

The new group is formed of six talented staff that, in 2008, were given the chance to remain at Sega when the racing studio was shut and sold off.
The Solihull studio is currently building a PS Vita game set for release in 2012, Sega West production boss Gary Dunn has said.

"It’s going to be a PS Vita game that absolutely uses many features of the hardware to the max, and gives you some truly innovative gaming opportunities not seen before," he explained in a new interview with Develop.

We think the best way to understand the new hardware is to build concepts for it, so the Technology Group has, for a number of months, been building concepts for a number of platforms.

But, one of the concepts we were so blown away by, we decided to green-light it. It’s going to be a PS Vita game that absolutely uses many features of the hardware to the max, and gives you some truly innovative gaming opportunities not seen before.

I personally wouldn’t want to put this project under a genre of any kind.

And, thinking about who would develop this prototype into a game, we looked at some external options and thought, you know what, the best place to make this is at the Technology Group. And suddenly, putting a production team next to this technology group began to make a lot of sense.

The way it’s going to work is the technology group are going to form as the founding members of the studio, and over the next two months as we build up the team; those technology group members will refocus on engines, tools, tech and prototypes.

We want to build the studio up for 15 game developers, on top of the six in the technology group. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but Sega has a big network of contractor staff as well who can be very useful.

In terms of hiring more, that really depends on where our project ends. The new studio’s project is being built for PlayStation Vita, so we might need more staff if the game moves to other systems.

If it "absolutely uses many features of the hardware to the max, and gives you some truly innovative gaming opportunities not seen before" it's going to be difficult to faithfully move to other systems!