Sega is paving the way to be the "new" Disney

It's been a while since Sega has been working on movies and series, some behind the scenes and others not so much. We have a new Sonic movie coming soon and we can already get a taste of the series from the famous Yakuza franchise, with Like a Dragon making its appearance on Amazon's Prime Video, which makes things interesting for the company.

The good part is that they won't stop there, especially knowing that they are doing very well with each of their bets and this time Sega wants to become something similar to Disney and has one of the great former employees of the animation giant to do so.

After spending 17 years at Disney, Justin Scarpone was hired as global transmedia chief at Sega earlier this year. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Scarpone noted that most video game companies did not follow the examples of Disney and Marvel in using their properties in all media. But he plans to change that at Sega.

"Games are [today] the irreplaceable form of entertainment for the entire world, much larger than any other form of entertainment, [and] it's about time to have a replication of the Hollywood studio system for the game industry," said Scarpone. "Game companies don't have that content wheel history that Walt Disney basically invented, taking that IP and having a five, ten-year content roadmap, like [Marvel executive] Kevin Feige does for movies. And connecting that to all other businesses and evolving the story across these different experiences, you know, products and content services."

Scarpone also noted that the prominent role of Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic X Shadow Generations was an example of the crossover content he wants Sega to pursue.

"[There are] things we are doing in other channels: Shadow products, Shadow character appearances," Scarpone added. "We want to turn Shadow into an individual and perennial character. It's all planned."

"I think Sega is positioned to grow based on this evolution of our company into an entertainment company," Scarpone continued. "There are other game companies going in the same direction and with varying degrees of success, which we respect, and Nintendo is great, right? They are kind of the big brother of all Japanese game companies... But I think we are doing very well and there are many more opportunities to evolve what the Sega brand means to consumers around the world. So that's what I want to achieve."

It's good news if we look at the history that, as I said before, has made Sega look closely at the fans and make them happy, having literally made a correction patch for the old terrible version of Sonic in their first movie, making the hedgehog much cooler and more like what we see in games and animations.