Yuji Naka has left Sega to form his own development studio. Good for him. It’s about time – Sega’s been keeping him down for years with failed franchise titles. Can anyone tell me when the last good Sonic game was released? Sonic DS probably.

It’s too bad it had to end this way. This does not bode well for Phantasy Star Universe, with recent delays and now Naka-san leaving before the title is finished released. It will be interesting to see if he can take some of his IP with him, like Burining Rangers or NiGHTS. Otherwise, we may never see sequels he himself would be proud to release.

In other Sega news, they are continuing their strange release schedule by making VF5 (that’s Virtual Fighter 5 for newbs.) a PS3 exclusive. I can see their boardroom meetings where they discuss the company’s strategic goals: “How do we increase market share? Let’s release all of our crappy games cross-platform, and give our best games limited exposure” (not a real quote). Now, I can see why DOA (that’s Learn Your Fighting Games if you don’t understand that) continues to be exclusive to Microsoft consoles – because Microsoft wants it that way. I’m not sure with Sega’s last generation release schedule if this is an exclusive deal or if it’s just a lack of management accumen at the house that Sonic built, but judging from the last generation, the reason is probably just as random. Pretty soon we’ll be able to buy Sega from Sammy for pennies.

And just a quick thought. Yuji Naka has garnered the attention at Sega for the past couple of years, which might not be quite that earned, but does anyone ever wonder what happened to Yu Suzuki? Was it the expensive failure of Shenmue that caused his fall from grace? He’s not even as close to the VF series as he once was. Strange. I think he should be the one leaving Sega, there’s probably some greener pastures out there for him. And I’d love to see another Shenmue.