3 years on SEGA Driving Studio closes its doors
Despite some rave reviews and a decent review score on Metacritic of 77 per cent, the sequel to SEGA Rally has been ditched following poor game sales. Worst still, the company has decided to shut down the UK's SEGA driving studio, which only opened in 2005.SEGA's driving studio was created with the mission statement to create driving games for the Western market whilst paying homage to Sega's legacy in the genre, but SEGA Rally just wasn't enough to compete with the established racing franchise, such as Project Gotham Racing, Forza 2 and Colin Mcrae.
“The decision is part of a review of SEGA's Western Development Studios to ensure that each studio is a profitable entity in its own right, and unfortunately the SEGA Racing Studio’s five year plan would not result in a successful return for the SEGA business moving forward.
“SEGA would like to stress that there will be no changes within their other internal development studios.”
The design team consisted of recruited talent from the likes of Rockstar, Rare, Codemasters and Criterion Game, but no plans have been made as yet to re-employ the workers in other internal SEGA studios.
