On today’sSega Nama stream, Toshihiro Nagoshi, the chief creative officer for SEGA and director ofJudgment,shared some updates on the future of the new IP and the Pierre Taki case. He mentioned how surprised he was like everyone else when the news broke out, and how they quickly decided totemporarily haltJudgment’s sales.
Everyone involved withJudgmentall had different opinions on what to do and thought there was no correct solution to the problem. Some thought that the game itself is unrelated to the case and shouldn’t be affected, while some didn’t. In the end, they decided what to do by vote.
Toshihiro Nagoshi also jokingly said he saw multiple journalists reporting thatJudgment 2and evenJudgment 3were already planned, and how journalists get way too carried away. Everyone is assuming Sega already greenlighted moreJudgmentgames, but they didn’t decide anything. If they do make a sequel, Pierre Taki’s character Kyohei Hamura won’t appear in it. The fact that there’s no sequel planned doesn’t seem to be related to the case though.
Toshihiro Nagoshi also talked about how following the Pierre Taki case, theJudgmentdevelopment team received messages of support, but also mocking “serves you right guys” messages, saying they should stop using real personalities as actresses and actors in their games. Nagoshi said that he doesn’t think it got anything to do with whether they hire them or not, and that anyone can make such mistakes anyway. If, for example, one of Sega’s developers had similar condemnable conduct, they’d take measures accordingly as well.
Toshihiro Nagoshi also jokingly said he’s angry about people suddenly buying the game following the scandal, and how they should have bought it from the start if they really wanted it, as that would have been better. The high sales do make him happy though, andJudgmentsold through 97% of its shipments as of now.
Judgmentis a PS4 exclusive and willrelease in the west on June 25. Sega confirmed that Pierre Taki’s character will be changed, meaning sales should resume soon in Japan once they’re done with the change.
