Last week, Sega announced plans to bring a selection of its back catalog to a new service called Sega Forever. This service will allow Sega fans to play some of their favorite games on mobile devices like Android and iOS for free.
But shortly after its launch, things went a little sour. Lots of negative comments arose on store pages for Sega Forever, and a writer for Digital Foundry warned players to stay away from the service — going so far as to call the emulation lousy.
DO NOT TOUCH those Sega Forever games. Lousy emulation in a Unity wrapper. Not good at all.
— John Linneman (@dark1x) June 21, 2017
To get the company’s take on the rocky reception of Sega Forever, Eurogamer interviewed Sega Networks’ Chief Marketing Officer Mike Evans — who is a key figure behind the service.
Upon hearing Eurogamer’s suggestion that the launch didn’t go very smoothly, Evans was quick to retort that in spite of some of the louder criticisms of Sega Forever, the overall reception has been positive.
“If you look at the vast majority of feedback it’s been strong. If you look at ratings on the app store from consumers, there’s definitely some very good sentiment as well. Is there room for improvement like anything? Yeah, there is. It’s a very ambitious project…and we’ve got lots of things planned as we go through, and we’re going to keep on working on that quality. For the vast majority of our fans it’s solid, but the specialist guys who are looking for the absolute epitome of quality, we’re going to keep improving for those guys.”
Evans also responded to a top comment on the App Store, which says outright that the Sega Forever service is a joke.
“We need to look at the larger trends on reviews as well, so rather than spot-checking one to represent the overall feel, we’ve been actively listening to all the reviews and trying to figure out if there is an area that we need to address.
Phantasy Star is the title where we need to have the most work, if we’re honest. We had a couple of challenges with Sonic out of the gate with users not being able to disable ads, we submitted an update yesterday and that fixed it. We’ve actively been going back to individual consumers one on one to address those issues. We want them to have the best experience possible.”
The rest of the interview with Eurogamer follows a very similar pattern of Evans deflecting the negative remarks made by those using Sega Forever. Only time will tell, though, if the service can set itself straight and address all the current user complaints.
What about you, fine readers? Do you guys think Sega Forever is a good service? Or have you been having issues with it too? Sound off in the comments below!
