Endless business
The announcement of the sale was included ina financial documentpublished today by Sega, which reports an extraordinary loss of 5.9 billion yen (about £29.9 million or $38.7 million) due to the sale of the strategy game developers. Sega say “this marks the completion of the series of structural reforms”. But of course, we have heardthings like that beforefrom other corps whichproved to be untrue. Stay frosty, is what I’m saying.
Meanwhile, Amplitude madetheir own announcementof the buyout, framing it as a return to being an indie studio, which does have its advantages to be fair. For example, they say the creative direction of the Endless games are now fully in “the hands of those who know them best.”
“This decision allows us to be more agile in our approach,” said studio co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis, “while continuing to shape the vision that has been ours from the very beginning.”
I do hope it’s a smooth transition back to indie life. The studio’s past games include theEndless Spaceseries,Endless Legend, and most recently the nifty sci-fi twin stick shooterEndless Dungeon, which Iliked enoughto call it one of ourbest roguelikes. They also continue to work on their big 4X strategy game,Humankind, which is a"heavyweight competitor to Civilization", according to our Nate (RPS in peace). In other words, they make some pretty good games. I hope their launch out into the free seas of game publishing goes well. It’s choppy out there.
Sega, for their part, have not been very fun today. They are alsodelisting 60 classic games from Steam, includingCrazy Taxiand Streets Of Rage. Boooooo!
