Thread by @gosokkyu

nikkei ran a two-part interview on Puyo Puyo's position in the world of esports🇯🇵

pt.1 with Sega eSports manager Hiroyuki Miyazaki (also one of the leads on MD Mini, as it happens) business.nikkei.com/atcl/gen/19/00…

pt.2 with Puyo producer Mizuki Hosoyamada business.nikkei.com/atcl/gen/19/00…

he's quick to point out it doesn't necessarily correlate to game sales but, according to Hosoyamada, Puyo Puyo has bigger brand awareness across more demographics/generations in Japan than any other Sega brand—like, overwhelmingly so, in the same ballpark as Sanrio, Nintendo, etc

also, apparently Sakura Wars is neck and neck with Sonic for brand recognition in Japan, even if that number's ovewhelmingly stacked with over-30s/over-40s

there's talk about how Sonic isn't ubiquitous in Japan like it is overseas: basically, Sega of Japan never really pushed it the way overseas branches did and then they dropped the ball during the Saturn era for a variety of reasons, and once the momentum dies it's hard to recover

conversely, Compile-era Puyo was constantly showing up everywhere and got expensive and wide-reaching marketing campaigns that cemented a certain level of popularity that persisted even when particular games weren't especially popular & Sega's been able to maintain that awareness

even though Puyo is this massive IP for Sega, Hosoyamada says there was a point around 2007-2008 were, for a variety of reasons, he was literally the only Sega employee assigned to Puyo

even now, due to subcontracting & other factors, the internal Puyo team's settled at ~10 ppl