14 DAY TRIAL // SEGA announces the launch of a website called PlaySega that will allow gamers to play a wide variety of casual titles. Initially, the gaming portal will be available in North America and in Europe. All the games that will be available from SEGA are set to be free of charge. There will be a lot of genres: arcade, word, card, puzzle, quiz, Sonic-themed, and sports titles.
Nick Pili, the network business director at SEGA of Europe, says that “Sega fans and new gamers alike can now come together in one place and enjoy some of our most exciting vintage and new titles. There was a story out there recently that we have a locked vault full of retro Sega classics in Japan. Well, it's true -- and we've been given full access to a lot of the properties in it”.
The biggest offering on the site at the moment is Sonic at the Olympic Games, which is a direct port of the mobile version. You can also play Brain Assist, which is the SEGA clone of Nintendo’s very successful Brain Age. Titles like Ice Shuffle and Aquatic Word Burst have been created by the company as Internet exclusives.
The idea is that SEGA is launching the portal now to see how much attention it attracts; later, it will be implementing something called the VIP Area designed to offer gamers access to more web titles and SEGA classics, like Columns, Puyo Pop, Chu Chu Rocket, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Monkey Ball Tip 'n Tilt. The new area will probably require a player subscription, although SEGA could be looking at creating an ad supported business.
A move to the Internet, via a gaming portal, could be one way for SEGA to boost its gaming profile and its revenue, as its traditional arcade machine business seems to be bringing in less and less profit.