It's official: Yu Suzuki retires

[Pulsar_t]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/yu-su ... ga-r-and-d

According to GameSpot, SEGA Sammy has announced that legendary designer and producer Yu Suzuki has retired from active, creative development work.

The creator of Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, who oversaw a string of early arcade classics at SEGA - Space Harrier, Afterburner and OutRun among them - will no longer be an R&D "creative officer". He will remain with the company as manager of the Research & Development department for one of SEGA's arcade divisions, AM Plus.

AM Plus has so far released two games in Japan, Psy Phi and SEGA Race TV. Suzuki has had such a low profile within SEGA recently that Simon Jeffrey, president of the company's American arm, wasn't sure if he was still an employee when Gamasutra asked him last year.

Although his early games will forever be associated with SEGA, Yu Suzuki's work took on a different colour from the Dreamcast era in the late 1990s. He became preoccupied with intense realism in the F355 Challenge racing simulator and the languid adventure series Shenmue, games that had hardcore followings, but never justified their huge development costs.

The Shenmue project was close to Suzuki's heart, but a third game never saw the light of day, and a planned massively multiplayer spin-off, Shenmue Online, was also shelved.

Suzuki's spirit lives on, however, in the evergreen Virtua Fighter and OutRun. OutRun Online Arcade is released on Xbox Live Arcade next week.

Well I hope he enjoys his retirement. God knows he hasn't done much after Shenmue.. speaking of which he ought to offer fans some sort of closure regarding its unresolved storyline.

[Ack]

I realize that people feel Sega hasn't been the same company for a while, but I consider this truly the end of an era for Sega.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sigh.......Oh how the mighty have fallen.

[weasels]

I respect that man and hearing this gave me shivers.........i hope he lives a good life for the rest of his life. It would of been nice to see a resolve to shenmue though but i cant ask for everything.

[IcKy99]

so what happens now, sega jumps off the nearest cliff?

[t0yrobo]

Well so much for even imaging that there's hope for a Shenmue 2.

[Ack]

Well so much for even imaging that there's hope for a Shenmue 2.

Do you mean Shenmue 3?

[molotovwars]

Well so much for even imaging that there's hope for a Shenmue 3.

[Dakinggamer87]

The era of SEGA is finished!! There goes my last hope of seeing Shenmue III ever be released..

[gradualmeltdown]

If you read "Arcade Mania" there is an interview in there with him. It made me so sad. In a nutshell he says that there are so many idea's he has for arcade machines. He doesn't believe Sega or any other company will ever fund them so he's been basically collecting a paycheck. He said if money were no issue he would be in the industry forever.

Suzuki just wants to go further than anyone else, but I think he hit the wall. Back when people like him entered the industry endless creativity and engineering were what his employers wanted. No one knew what a successful game was, and the technology was so simple innovation was a requirement. Now it seems that innovation is seen as expensive and companies would rather hire / support employees who can churn out industry standard work.