Game development is a lengthy process that sees companies and developers cooperating together in order to produce high quality titles and technology. This includes big AAA company collaborations, withMicrosoftandSEGAbeing one of them. Thiscollaboration between the two companieswas announced earlier this month, stating that they were going to use the strengths of both to form a special next-gen development “alliance,” regarding any future game projects.
Before the collaboration’s announcement, SEGA games had seen a lot of recent success on Xbox’s consoles. This ranges from theYakuzafranchise reaching a wider audience when it was released through Xbox’s Game Pass toSonic games getting improved performance on the Xbox Series X. This collaboration was part of a larger set of rumors, which indicated that SEGA itself was being acquired by Microsoft, or that future games developed by SEGA would become Xbox exclusives. A recent fiscal earnings report from SEGA details more on what this alliance entails, along with the clarification of what will happen to future game releases.
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The main reasonwhy SEGA and Microsoft are partnering upis due to the former’s desire to create brand-new “Super Games,” which are described to be huge live service games, similar to SEGA’s ownPhantasy Star Online. For that, SEGA would need servers, which is where Microsoft’s Azure servers come into play. They would be used to help host, deploy, and develop some of these ambitious games.Phantasy Star Online 2already uses Azure servers, so it makes sense for SEGA to use something familiar and is seeing great success.
The report says that it would be considering investing 100 billion yen (approximately $882 million) into this goal. It then goes on to describe howSEGAandMicrosofthave had a close business relationship, as well as how Microsoft was on-board with the ambitious “Super Game” concept, especially since SEGA have developed games for Microsoft likeHalo Wars 2.
SEGA then clarifies and confirms that this partnership will not lead toXbox exclusive games. “We are not talking about releasing games to Microsoft exclusively, but rather to develop Super Game that will be delivered to the world together, with their technical support,” the company speaker said. So despite the rumors, this alliance betweenMicrosoftandSegawill only be on the technology side, and any future live service games will be supported through Microsoft’s Azure servers.
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