"No plans" for new Sega Rally

By Robert Purchese Published 16 May, 2011

Sega "constantly looking at" racing genre.

This week Sega Rally Online Arcade arrives on Xbox Live Arcade - but will Sega ever embark on a full-scale Rally revival?

At the moment "the answer is no", Sega West CEO Mike Hayes told Eurogamer.

"Sega constantly wrestles with what existing IP we should try and reignite," he said. "We did a pretty good job with Sega Rally back in 2007, but it came out at a time when the consumer was moving away from driving games in general.

"There's a bit of a resurgence in those games - I've got to say Codemasters did a brilliant job with F1 2010, it was first-class - and therefore, is it a viable market? We're constantly looking at it.

"Have we got any plans for Sega Rally on any platform at the moment?" he asked. "The answer is no. But we constantly review those IPs to see if we can reinvent them. A lot of it is dependent on what those platforms can do. And of course the cost of development."

Four years ago, Eurogamer awarded Sega Rally a dirty great 9/10. "Sega Rally is easily the freshest arcade driving experiences to have emerged in years, providing more wide-eyed excitement in five minutes than most games manage in five hours," enthused Eurogamer reviewer and then editor Kristan Reed.

A year later, Sega closed the Racing Studio that developed Rally. Codemasters was quick on the scene to buy the floundering team.

This Wednesday, Sega Rally Online Arcade arrives - first on Xbox Live Arcade, and TBC on PlayStation Network. The game blends the 2007 Sega Rally console release with its arcade machine counterpart, and all for the arousing price of 800 Microsoft Points.

SEGA Rally 2007.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (23) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • StolenGlory #1 1 year ago

    That's fine.

    Sega Rally Arcade Online will do in the meantime, y'know, before you reboot Daytona USA.

    Thanks in advance!

  • Mister-Wario #2 1 year ago

    So it's coming to PSN at some point? Not that I want to buy it right now, but I might want to.

  • BBIAJ #3 1 year ago

    Methinks he meant F1 2010?

    Of course they did a bloody good job, Codies bought SEGA Racing Studio off of them in the first place!

    Not sure how many of them joined Swordfish Studios/Codemasters Birmingham, if any to be honest, but I'm sure they were put to good use on at least one of Codies many racing franchises.

  • HyperTails #4 1 year ago

    People say that they should reboot Daytona. How about Sega Touring Car Championship? Haven't see it since the Saturn.

    Then there's Virtua Racing that could be good if done right. Doesn't even need to be retail, a download release would be good enough.

  • gumblecosby #5 1 year ago

    How about Daytona with 32 player online racing?

  • gillri #6 1 year ago

    just shenmue 3 please

  • Pulsar_t #7 1 year ago

    I love Sega Rally Revo, pity it's runs slower than NFSHP on my computer, but hey it's a solid rally game.

  • nuanimal #8 1 year ago

    "Sega constantly wrestles with what existing IP we should try and reignite," he said

    I literally read that as Sega, taking once beloved and great franchises, and then dousing with petrol and setting on fire.

  • HyperTails #9 1 year ago

    EG will you please sort out the spam. Unless your planning on turning into IGN, which I hope you aren't.

  • Toothball #10 1 year ago

    It's probably best for most Sega series to be left alone, for a while at least, to prevent them developing their own versions of the Sonic Cycle.

  • afray #11 1 year ago

    @BBIAJ there's a few ex-Sega people at Codies Brum working on F1, but not many. The studio didn't really stick together as a team after Codies bought them, with everyone integrating into the different teams that already existed.

  • jablonski #12 1 year ago

    I never did understand that 9/10

    Deserved nothing like as high as a 9

  • kirankara #13 1 year ago

    screw all those games mentioned, just give us another panzer dragoon please

  • Huxamalay #14 1 year ago

    Sega Rally & Guardian Heroes for xbox live

    FFS Sony, sort it out you terminal whelps

  • andromeda #15 1 year ago

    just play the upcoming Dirt3 .
    By the looks of it from gameplay vids, its got those dull wide open roads and arcadey feel even more so this time round :(

    when are codies gonna give us some of this...

    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irg0pGjvRzc&feature=related
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irg0pGjvR...[/link]

  • RobTheBuilder #16 1 year ago

    I'm going to sneak a crowbar in for the Sega Wrestler who is fighting for Shenmue 3.

  • lockload #17 1 year ago

    The XBLA games seems to be all that is needed, sega rally with its arcade roots was never a super deep game, why do we need a retail agme?

  • oupe #18 1 year ago

    Eurogamer awarded Sega Rally a dirty great 9/10

    This comes up once in a while and everybody is always wondering why it got a 9. Did you guys play a different game than we did?

  • Subdominator #19 1 year ago

    Who is we? I totally agree with a 9/10. Revo is one of the best racing games of all time.

  • RobTheBuilder #20 1 year ago

    I really liked SRR on 360 but as much as I played it I never felt I could get any better at it, so it got frustrating.
    The PSP one was good too.

  • Bander #21 1 year ago

    I initially loved SSR. Colourful visuals, fun handling, lots of bashing into other cars and the track deformation worked well. Problem is, I got sick of it because of the stupid campaign structure and the complete lack of information on any of the car choices.

    To make progress, the player has to race the tracks in set of 3, usually meaning several different surface types. At the start this is fine; any of the initial car choices will do because the opponents are slow. But later on there comes the point where I found myself getting first place on two tracks and failing abysmally on the third, and not having a clue as to whether practise or a different car choice was the key to doing better. So that then leads to trying again with different cars, repeating easy tracks over and over, or failing tracks that used to be easy because of poor car choices again. Since the only things to look forward to at this point was even harder opponents and more unlockable cars to get confused with, it was time to stop.

    How did nobody notice how flawed and lacking in fun this was prior to the game's release? SSR was amazing as an arcade racer prior to the 'difficulty by repetition and error' kicks in. How come car stats were missing in the first place? This just seemed so easy to notice and fix.

    My hopes are high that SR Arcade Online doesn't have this problem. But there's still a big nagging doubt that there's nobody within Sega itself who is prepared to point out when something as fundamental as a gameplay structure needs fixing.
    Edited by Bander at 16/05/11 @ 19:47

  • Torkin #22 1 year ago

    Sega has a big library of IPs, I think the problem is the actual Sega is not as big as before and they don't have money to resurrect all that beloved franchises. To name only some... Panzer Dragoon, Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star (a proper one), Shenmue (though I never liked it it's a big IP), Landstalker, Ecco, Shinobi... It would be great to see some of them reinvented.

  • pac666 #23 1 year ago

    Daytona is a no brainer. Apparently SEGA now have no brains.