LogInAfter the cancellation of HYENAS, it seems that SEGA wants to receive more games like Total War.
Image credit: Creative Assembly
In September, SEGA announced the cancellation of HYENAS, a multiplayer extraction shooter developed by Creative Assembly, as well as some other unannounced titles, justifying the decision by the need to reduce its expenses in Europe. Creative Assembly officially stated that it was due to ambitious plans and severe competition within the multiplayer shooter genre but some creators, who worked on the canceled project, came forward and shared their opinions on the whole situation regarding HYENAS. It seems that its demise was mostly attributed to a lack of clear direction, a disruptive engine change, and excessively cautious design choices.
However, during a recent financial results briefing presentation, Haruki Satomi, the CEO of SEGA, shared another piece of information, stating that the developer had been working on a genre that they were not familiar with, and that became the reason why HYENAS got canceled.
"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," stated Satomi.
Image credit: Creative Assembly, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
Satomi noted that while some SEGA studios successfully adapted to different genres, others faced challenges in doing so. One such studio was Creative Assembly, "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."
According to Satomi, SEGA has recognized the importance of leveraging each studio's strengths, so Creative Assembly will be returning to developing games within the genre they know. Further details regarding the studio's future were not disclosed by SEGA.
"However, 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," shared Satomi.
Creative Assembly didn't provide any comments on that. Hopefully, we'll also hear more from their side.
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