Sega cancels Hyenas and other unannounced titles

thesixthaxis.com:

Sega has announced that they are cancelling Hyenas, the extraction shooter that was in development at Creative Assembly, as well as some other unannounced titles.

The company states:

“In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be to cancel “HYENAS” and some unannounced titles under development. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development.”

With the write-down of expenditure, the company now expects to see losses of 14.3 billion yen through the end of this current fiscal year. They will also be making a “reduction of various fixed expenses”, which is likely a code phrase for layoffs. While these could come across the breadth of Sega, Creative Assembly will be the main target of these changes, and almost certainly the Hyenas team as a whole, unless they can find other positions within the company.

The news is quite surprising, with Creative Assembly closing in on a full launch for the game after months of closed alpha and then a recent closed beta test following a splashy Gamescom presence. However, it’s fair to say that Sega struggled to really make waves with this game.

Announced last summer, Hyenas was based around looting so-called plunderships as they took vintage merchandise from a devastated Earth to fill the vaults of meaningless loot of billionaires that had fled to Mars. Where most extraction shooters lean in on militaristic tone and lawless environments, Hyenas was over the top and sensationalised with eccentric characters like a Sonic cosplayer or the drag queen Galaxia. It never felt like it really stuck home or found an engaged fanbase, and this