hile Sega’s historically based their business on their own IPs, the company has switched gears a bit in the last few years. Aliens, Iron Man, and now even more Marvel licensed characters are being snatched up by the company. We sit down with Scott Steinberg, the Vice President of Marketing Sega of America to discuss their recent acquisitions, and why the company isn't just focusing on their treasured franchises.

Game Informer: Are all of these three characters that you announced, are they exclusive to Sega?

Scott Steinberg: They are as they pertain to individual game character titles. Marvel has already secured games that have multiple characters – kind of a student body product. We don’t have exclusivity over those style games – Marvel Ultimate Alliance – etc. Nobody else can do an Iron Man-only game, a Hulk-only game, A Captain America or Thor-43only game. But they can do games with multiple characters in them.

GI: We thought Vivendi Universal had the Hulk, so how’d the whole Hulk deal come about?

Steinberg: You are correct, they indeed had that. Honestly I don’t know if the deal expired. Obviously the rights are no longer owned by them. Whether they did not have an interest in the new movie or Marvel did not have an interest in working with them is a big question mark and probably [a question] for the folks on the Vivendi side. All we know is that Marvel liked us and they saw what we were doing with Iron Man and Hulk is the natural progression.

GI: Sega is doing a lot of licensed titles, which is a big difference for Sega. Why continue tapping the Marvel catalog when you have so much internally that you could make. Why not go back to Shenmue? Another Samba de Amigo? Shinobi? Ecco? Golden Axe? I could go on for an hour. (laughs)

Steinberg: You know, I think that’s a great question. The reality is this announcement, and the volume within the announcement may feel like it tips the scale in a lopsided way toward licensed properties. We’ve been tapping into some of the vault characters and bringing them out to show the fanboys that we’re going to try and bring new life into these characters so that is still a very important part of our effort. With The Golden Compass and this Marvel announcement it may feel like the scale is a bit heavier towards licenses. That’s kind of because we started at zero. It’s now just getting to where it’s about the lower part of what the other top publishers are doing. We’re still nowhere at where the EAs, the Activisions, the THQs have as a percentage.  We have not neglected by any means – we haven’t announced them all – what we’re dusting off and bringing new life to our existing characters.

GI: Is that something we’ll see fleshed out more at your Gamers’ Day and E3?

Steinberg: Some of them. You know, the NiGHTS announcement, and we’re bringing NiGHTS back on the Wii. Hopefully you’ll see some of that, if not at the pre-E3 event, certainly at E3. There are a host of other games that are in development we haven’t announced that you should be quite excited about if you’re memory serves you on some of the epic properties of our past.

GI: Are all of these Marvel-licensed games going to be developed internally?

Steinberg: They will be developed in the West, so we’re not tapping our Sega of Japan studios for any of these efforts. We have sort-of-in-a-stealth-way announced that our Secret Level guys are working on part of our Iron Man efforts. But we haven’t announced any of our other developers for any of the other games.

GI: So we can assume they’ll all be third party developers.

Steinberg: Yes. Forthcoming.