Sega trims its mobile catalog — says it’s all meeting ‘standards’ (update)

Updated at 11:23 pacific with a statement from Sega.

Some of Sega’s older games are disappearing from mobile.

Sega announces today that it plans to pull some of its back library of mobile games from a number of app stores over the course of the next few weeks.  The company would not disclose which titles it plans to remove, but noted that “a number of them” no longer meet its standards. Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon and Samsung app stores will see removals for this reason.

The company says that owners of these removed titles will be able continue to play them following removal, and purchased apps will remain available permitting download in the future. But Sega won’t update these games, which could have owners encountering compatibility problems farther down the road with new hardware or operating systems.

Sega has continually released games since the smartphone age began, and it now has around 50 titles on the Apple App Store alone. Keeping up with its large back catalog as operating system updates and new hardware are released might be too much work.

Many of the currently available $1 ports from Sega’s console gaming history, such as Sega Genesis classic Golden Axe, are more likely to be removed than the more modern titles developed specifically for smartphones.

The company notes that while it has nothing to announce now, some of the removed titles could return in updated form later.

A Sega spokesperson’s statement further addresses the company’s goals with these removals: “A number of titles in our mobile catalog date back to the earliest iterations of devices. Mobile gameplay along with technological advancements have given players high expectations for what they should expect. Therefore it is in the best interest of players that we are investigating in our games and will remove the titles that no longer fit the mark we aim to reach. The on-going focus of our mobile games business is to treat our legacy IP with the utmost care, while also creating new titles that appeal to the modern mobile audience.”