"No plans" for new Sega Rally

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.