14 DAY TRIAL // Sega is one of the most respected names in gaming, being active in the industry for a huge amount of time, ever since the arcade days. The Japanese company also owns a lot of high-quality franchises for which it develops new iterations quite often, like Sonic for example.
But one new property that Sega has been heavily promoting is Bayonetta, a Devil May Cry-style hack and slash game in which a very attractive woman dressed only in her hair battles angels and demons during preset day events.
Sadly though, the game, which was scheduled for a worldwide release at the end of the year, can only make its established date in Japan, with Western audiences forced to wait it out until the beginning of 2010, when the Sega team considers that it is the best moment to launch the new property.
But the delay wasn't because they were afraid of competition at the end of this year though, as Sega West president Mike Haynes revealed to Kotaku: “It was purely practical reasons to be perfectly blunt, Bayonetta's coming out in Japan this October but we then need to translate it…. that is one issue. The bigger issue, is that in the western markets, unlike in Japan, bringing out new intellectual property in that November period, really, really, really is a challenge.”
He emphasizes that if the effort of localization had been done by September or October, then it would have certainly reached US and European shores. “If we could have launched it — the translation would have made it a challenge — it would have been late November or early December. And we just think that's a point when consumers are spending all their dollars on Need For Speed, Modern Warfare…hopefully Mario and Sonic.”
Perhaps it was the best move on behalf of Sega. Nobody wants to bungle up something as important as localization and, considering big blockbuster releases like Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2 or Halo 3: ODST, perhaps it was for the best. Look forward to Sega in the early months of 2010.