‘We are not a retro company’: Sega prepares to go back to the future

Sega started as a rock’n’roll breath of fresh air in a Nintendo-dominated world – and America and Europe CEO Shuji Utsumi wants to shake things up once again

F or more than a decade, between the late 80s and the dawn of the 21st century, Sega was one of the coolest video game companies on the planet. Its arcade games, from Golden Axe to Virtua Fighter, were blockbuster successes; the Mega Drive brought a punk rock attitude to the home console scene, challenging Nintendo’s family friendly approach with eye-pummelling TV commercials and censor-baiting games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap.

Arguably though, it was later, in the Dreamcast era, that Sega’s studios were producing their most innovative and extravagant work. The likes of Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5 were hypercolourful celebrations of Tokyo pop culture. Now, the man who managed Sega Japan’s developers at that time, Shuji Utsumi, is the CEO of Sega America and Europe – and he has a plan to restore the company to its creative heights.

Utsumi has had a long and varied career in games, starting at Sony with the launch of the PlayStation in 1993, before moving to Sega and then Q Entertainment, Warner Music and Disney Interactive. He returned to Sega in 2019, eventually becoming co-chief operating officer during a challenging period for Sega Europe. “European studios have really amazing IPs, but at the same time there were difficulties,” he says. “I had to work on restructuring the group.” That process meant the cancellation of Creative Assembly’s multimillion dollar online shooter Hyenas, the first of a raft of live service game closures across the industry.

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