At the recently concluded E3, GameSpot had the opportunity to speak with Charles Bellfield, vice president of marketing and corporate communications at Sega of America, about the future of his company as a third-party publisher, its multiplatform development strategy, and specific game announcements such as Phantasy Star Online for the Nintendo GameCube and the Sega Sports lineup.

　　Throughout the interview, Bellfield stressed that Sega is interested in taking the multiplatform approach with many of its primary franchises. The company will release its Sega Sports line across all platforms and expects to do the same with several other high-profile franchises. However, Sega does plan to take the demographic of each specific console into consideration when making product decisions. "What we want to do is slowly unveil our content strategy," Bellfield explained. "So, you can see that we're making sense with our strategy. Sega Sports across all platforms is obviously our first major announcement. It doesn't matter what platform you have down the road, you will be able to play Sega Sports. The attitude and the passion for what Sega Sports is to consumers is very important for us today, whereas our competitors' sports titles update the basic features year upon year--by updating the teams and tweaking the graphics. Now having made that cross-platform announcement today, it leaves us plenty of room going forward to make similar announcements about other titles."

　　When asked whether Phantasy Star Online Version 2 will be compatible across multiple platforms, including the Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo GameCube versions, Bellfield declined to comment directly. However, he did say that it is Sega's goal to connect as many gamers as possible, particularly in games that have the online component as their core. "The platform of choice that Sega is developing for is gamers in all of us--the people, the individuals, the gamers, that is Sega's platform," Bellfield said. "Our goal is to bring as many of our games to as many of those gamers, whatever platform they have. And if it is a game that has an online core, then obviously our objective is to connect those gamers together. Phantasy Star Online is currently up and running on the GameCube, but as for a connection to the game on other platforms, that's an announcement for later."

　　Turning his attention to game titles that are anticipated but haven't been discussed recently, Bellfield confirmed the status of games such as Farnation and Headhunter. As reported, Farnation is no longer in development for the Sega Dreamcast, and its development has been moved to another next-generation console. On the subject of Headhunter, Bellfield said, "I can confirm that Headhunter is being considered as a title in our multiplatform strategy. The development work on Headhunter is continuing [and] the team is doing an amazing job. So, we look forward to releasing that title as part of our multiplatform strategy."

　　Sega is not interested in hastily unveiling its development strategy as a multiplatform developer and rushing specific game announcements. To that end, E3 only serves as a springboard for plenty of game announcements to come in the weeks and months ahead. "As I've said before, we have many, many more games to be announced going forward," Bellfield revealed. "Already, we have 30 games that we've announced and 50 SKUs of those games. If you compare that with any third-party publisher on the market, it shows a huge commitment to gamers globally. You can look forward to some new announcements from us, and our partner companies, in about two weeks. From then on, we expect to make more announcements very regularly."

　　The entire interview with Charles Bellfield, where he discusses other topics such as Dreamcast sales, can be seen below in video form by clicking on the appropriate media link.