I m not versed in Jap company law as I said before, so I don't know the % of shares that a person must own to start such proceedings. Practical rules regarding costs still apply even to this scenario that you mention though.
Orta was in no form or fashion originally being made for the Dreamcast. And Toejam and Earl III, Gun Valkyrie, and Shenmue II were all better than anything Sega put anywhere else. :nod: And yes, I realize every game I just listed was originally in developement for the DC. :lol:
I know it was planned for DC at an early stage, there was even a rumor back in the day (2000) about the game being released in 2002. But yeah, actual development started on the Xbox.
I remember Gamespot saying "Team Andromeda" was planning a new Panzer Dragoon early on in the DC's life, but it certainly wouldn't have been Orta. Especially not if it was actually Team Andromeda planning it, since the series creator views Orta as little more than fan fiction. Even then, it was all rumors, and given that back then Sega actually had a lick of creativity and rarely carried non-mascot console franchises over into the proceeding generation... I find it very hard to believe.
They did, but no one all that important from the team did. Tomohiro Kondo went on to form another company, Yukio Futatsugi (considered the "father" of Panzer Dragoon) left Sega after PDSaga, made some game on his own, and then went to MS. Most of the other big players from TA (Kusunoki, Takeshita, and one other guy that always slips my mind) went over to Artoon along with Naoto Oshima and Yoji Ishii. I also think a lot of the programmers and art people went to Artoon as well (though I haven't directly compared credits or anything). Point being, Smilebit had a very miniscule number of ex-Team Andromeda people. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED Smilebit, next to Team Andromeda they are my favorite Sega team, but they didn't have the "super talent" that Team Andromeda had, as most of that came from Futatsugi and Kusunoki. Oh, and the guy that did the character art for PDSaga went to Q?. I can't remember his name though.
I thought a lot of Team Andromeda went into UGA..hence the similarities between Rez and Panzer Dragoon?
I say they were wanted too much money and MS didnt wanted to pay that much... I'll say otherwise: they must be worth at least $3.5 billions now.
It makes sense. When Sega went out of console manufacturing, they started working 24/7 in game developement and with lots of great games being released Sega's value started growing a lot. If Microsoft had to buy Sega in some moment, it was when the Dreamcast died.
Some of them might have wound up at UGA. I'm still not sure where Yoshida Kentaro went (Art director for PDIIZwei). The director for the battle system in PDSaga went to Smilebit (since he was the director for Orta). Some programmers and what not might've been spread around as well. But the main people behind Panzer Dragoon? Almost all of them were gone by 2000 or so. I mean, I'd say the four main people behind the Panzer Dragoon trilogy were Yukio Futatsugi (Main designer, director for Panzer Dragoon/Panzer Dragoon Saga), Tomohiro Kondo (series producer, director of Panzer Dragoon II Zwei), Hidetoshi "Wiz" Takeshita (System Programmer for all three games), and Manabu Kusunoki (pretty much the man responsible for Panzer Dragoon's art style), and they were all gone by 2000. I'd say Futatsugi was the main genius behind the series. He went on to produce Ring of Red (though I've NEVER seen his name in the credits for it...), after which he headed up the internal developement team at Microsoft Game Studios Japan, where he made Phantom Dust. Tomohiro Kondo... is pretty much a failure now, making some gambling type games for the PSP? I don't know, it all looked really shitty. Then again, his only game prior to Panzer Dragoon was Panic! on the Sega CD... so... Takeshita and Kusunoki wound up at Artoon. Takeshita actually went on to direct Yoshi's Tilt-and-Tumble as well as Yoshi's Island DS. Kusunoki pretty much does art, and if you play Blue Dragon, you can definitely see Kusunoki's influence there. Still don't know who did what in Vampire Rain though... *sigh*, I need to play through that so I can know.
They have an annual revenue of $800 millions today, and since they were worth almost $2 billions when the DC went belly up I say $3.5 billions is a possible number...
Okay, but how much of that is negated by Sega's debt? If I recall correctly, Sammy ended up having to assume some of the responsibility for credit when the Sega buyout happened. Even if it's not a significant percentage, any amount of debt can be enough to derail a buyout once the disclosure process starts. Even without the debt, revenue has to be balanced against operating expenses before you can even think to use the number to calculate corporate worth.
When SEGA was worth $3 billion after the Saturn it was already in debt, in fact many people think that they went and made the DC as a last attemp to pay their debts without any major changes to their business strategy.
the value of a business has to do with things ranging from brand awareness, its goodwill, its clientele, its assets and of course its debts , both long term and current. Generally speaking it needs a specialized professional to value such things as well as information about on everything about the company.
Sega are worth way more than $3billion. They are Japan's second biggest publisher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega