Sega put Snoop Dogg, Ado, Tupac, and Bunta Sugawara in the same Stranger Than Heaven cast page. Yu Shirota is still Makoto Daito. Snoop is Orpheus, the smuggler who finds him on the ship. Ado is Osaka singer Keiko Shirai. Tupac is Amaru. Bunta’s face is Genzo Iwaki, voiced by Takashi Ukaji after the family signed off and Toei sent the old footage. New screenshots went up with the profiles. Dean Fujioka, Tori Kelly, and Snoop’s son Cordell Broadus are in there too. Snoop’s line: “Taking what’s meant to be where it’s meant to be. That’s our motto.” January 15, 2027. PS5, Xbox, PC. Game Pass.

Sega putting Bayonetta in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds as a free Year Two racer is the tell. Official post: Butterfly Witch machine, emotes, and sounds. Godzilla and Evangelion stay in the paid packs. The free slot keeps going to Sega’s own icons. Amigo closed Year One. Bayonetta opens Year Two. This is not guest DLC anymore. CrossWorlds is Sega’s crossover channel. The karts are just the delivery system.

SEGA says it’s seeing more fans who love its games and characters without actually playing the games, SEGA President explained that this is becoming more common across the company’s IPs, with Like a Dragon being a good example. A lot of these fans discover the series with YouTube videos or watching people stream the games and not playing them, SEGA still considers these people fans, and even “gamers.” Utsumi says their engagement with an IP can sometimes be even higher than that of people who actually play the games. Like a Dragon merchandise is also doing very well, with around 60–70% of customers being women. This is exactly why SEGA is pushing its transmedia strategy, expanding its franchises beyond games through merchandise, movies, events and other media.

SEGA Japanese announcement page has confirmed that Persona 6 will have a physical release, but only on PS5. The official Persona 6 listing names Xbox Series X|S, Windows, PS5 and Steam as platforms, but includes a footnote stating: “Only physical copies of the PlayStation®5 version are available.” PS5-only is from Sega Japan, and reflects standard Japan market practice, not on western markets

SEGA has cancelled its “Super Game” initiative, first announced in 2021. The ambitious plan called for new AAA live-service online titles backed by an $800 million budget and a Microsoft Azure partnership. >The project was officially dropped with no additional costs incurred. >SEGA is shifting away from free-to-play live-service games toward premium full games and revivals of established IPs. >Several previously announced remakes and updates remain on track, including Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Persona 4 Revival, Stranger Than Heaven, and Total War: Medieval III.

Great WSJ piece on Alvin Segal. He started on a factory floor in Montreal and built Peerless into the largest men’s suit maker in North America. The reason he showed up in NAFTA: Peerless could bring Italian cloth into Canada duty-free, make the suits here, and sell them in the US. American factories paid a tariff on the same fabric. That advantage was big enough to hold up the whole deal for months. In public they called it the textile issue. The negotiators called it the Segal issue. I got to meet him early in my career. I was selling t-shirts. He was already one of the great Jewish Canadian entrepreneurs. An incredible builder.