SEGA Sammy has unleashed a statement this Thursday regarding the cancellation of upcoming European game projects, including Creative Assembly’s announced FPS heist shooter HYENAS.
The announcement of the impending cancellations came Thursday morning, as SEGA Sammy Holdings released a financial statement including information on why the company has decided to scrap a game well into its development cycle. As the company states it has done well in European regions in the immediate past, SEGA says its recent profitability troubles are a result of a “reactionary decline from the stay-at-home demand in COVID-19 and the economic downturn due to inflation in European region” and that decline has lowered profitability in Europe regions.
The statement reads “To promptly adapt to these changes in the environment and improve profitability, we have decided to implement structural reforms aimed at increasing efficiency, mainly at our European bases and reviewed the title portfolio in those bases. Then we have made the difficult decision to cancel some titles under development as well as to reduce the fixed expenses.”
During a Q&A session immediately following the company’s Q1 earnings statement, SEGA had choice words when asked about HYENAS back in August. Executives Makoto Takahashi and Nobuaki Yoshii were the respondents on the Q&A session and they stated “We are unable to talk about this title because the details have not yet been announced at this time. As this is a challenging title, we are striving to improve its quality towards the release on the front line of development. We are also making final adjustments to its business model in parallel,” which means the shooter may have been in a perilous predicament since this statement and only today has its cancellation become official.
Creative Assembly is looking to its next release, Total War: Pharoah as the title is set to launch on October 11. The striking part of the cancellation brief, is SEGA directly said it made “the difficult decision to cancel some titles under the development,” so aside from Creative Assembly’s HYENAS more cancellation announcements can be incoming. Fans can read the whole statement from SEGA Sammy here, and the August Q&A can be also read from their website.
