With the recent announcement, that the Sega Ages lineup is coming to an end on the Switch, its not hard to look back on the series of releases and see what could have been done differently. Different games could have been chosen, and more risks taken, but in the end Sega did what they felt would make money. With no future releases planned however, there is one thing left that Sega can do with the Sega Ages games they already released for the Nintendo Switch.
The Sega Ages games were released digitally only on the system, and while that may make sense for individual releases, there is something different that can be done with multiple releases at once. Considering the large collectors market that exists, Sega should look into putting the various games onto physical collections for gamers to buy. This itself can be done in a few ways, and is a way Sega can get a second round of sales on the games now that their run has been completed. I see three main potential ways Sega can approach a physical release of the Sega Ages games, and I will break them down now.
The first way is the simplest but would no doubt come with the highest price point, and that is collecting all the games in one bundle and selling it as a cartridge. There would be many fans eager to buy the whole series, and would be happy to have a physical format version of the games. Due to the various improvements to the games, and the desire to get a return on investment though, Sega may put a higher price point on such a collection. This leads to the next possible format, and that would be simply dividing the games up in two or even three collections and selling them that way. The divide would simply be grouping the games together in bundles, but this leads to a risk of people only being interested in some of the games but not wanting others on a collection. This leads to the last possibility.
The last possibility is once again grouping the games together, but this time with a specific theme for the collections. For example, the arcade games in one collection and the console on another. Alternatively, the games could be group by genre in some form such as putting the platformers together, puzzle games in another, and vehicle based games in a third. These are only possible genre choices, but going by genre would allow Sega to tailor the collections to suit peoples’ tastes.
In the end however, Sega simply needs to bring the games out in a physical format, because not only would fans and collectors want it, the games would get a second chance to show sales-wise, why they are amazing.
In addition, for access to an extensive variety of active retro gaming groups on Facebook, visit Retro Gamers Hub.