“Although the game itself was good, we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users,” say Sega
Troubled developers Creative Assembly will double-down on their strength in making offline real-timestrategy games, following their failed attempt to break into the competitive shooter market with extractionFPSHyenas.
That’s the news from CA owners Sega, who expanded on their decision tosuddenly cancel Hyenas in Septemberafter years in development - and just days after the upcoming shooter’s latest closed beta on PC receiveda fairly warm reception. The decision also led toa number of layoffsat the UK studio.
“Although the game itself was good, we decided to cancel the development of Hyenas because we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users when we considered whether we could really operate this as a competitive online game for a long period of time,” said Sega president and CEO Haruki Satomi during the company’s latestresults presentation.
Satomi added that Creative Assembly were currently undergoing consultation regarding job losses in an effort to improve lost profitability caused by sudden business changes affecting Sega, including “sluggish sales and increased costs” caused by inflation and rising wages among other factors. Along with the risk of layoffs, Satomi said that additional unannounced titles had been cancelled alongside Hyenas, which wasreportedly its most expensive game to date.
As part of wider “structural reform” planned for its consumer entertainment division, Sega said that their studios would look to refocus on what they were best at in a notable step back from the more ambitious approach taken during the pandemic.
“Each studio has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the favorable winds of the early COVID-19 period, coupled with the strong performance of each title, led us to adopt a strategy of accelerating more, even in areas where those studios have not tried yet for further growth,” Satomi said. “However, some studios did well and some did not, so we have decided to focus again on [the] strength of each studio.”
In the case of Creative Assembly specifically, Satomi indicated that the studio’s strength lies in “offline RTS games” - namely theTotal War series- rather than shooters or online titles.
“To put it simply, Creative Assembly was good at offline games in the RTS genre, but they took on the challenge of developing Hyenas, an online game in the FPS genre.”
The move echoes recent comments from fellow UK devs Frontier, whojust this weekannounced that they would refocus on “creative management simulation” games such asPlanet Coaster,Planet ZooandJurassic World Evolutionin the wake of ailing RTS debutWarhammer: Age of Sigmar - Realms of Ruinand lower than expected sales for their latest F1 Manager game.
