Joining the likes of Relic and Creative Assembly
Sega’s stable of strategy games grows stronger with Amplitude Studios, the maker of the Endless series. The publisher has acquired the 4X game developer to “further strengthen its PC game portfolio and development capabilities in the U.S. and European regions,” according to today’s announcement.
Speaking to fans, Amplitude explained its reasoning. “What we want to do is to focus on making games; that is why we created Amplitude. But with the pressure on sales and marketing we found that more and more time was dedicated to everything else — everything that we didn’t have the size and scale to deal with. So we decided to look for the best partner we could to protect us from these distractions so that game development did not become a chore, but remained a passion.”
In addition to being “huge fans” of Relic (Dawn of War, Company of Heroes) and Creative Assembly (Total War), Amplitude also noted that “the bigger reason why we wanted to join Sega was how they treat their internal studios. Often, studios are controlled by a central department that dictates what games they should do, and how and when. But Sega is a company that offers its support to the creators, positioning itself as a service provider, helping studios to reach their goals with only one objective in mind: Quality!”
I’ve seen some players express concerns about how the acquisition might adversely affect the DLC and update plans of the upcoming Endless Space 2, but in general, this seems like a smart move for both Sega and Amplitude. Hopefully it’s a good fit for fans, too.
Amplitude joins the Sega family! [Amplitude]
