The darkest year for Sega fans was probably 2006 when the president of Sega of America bought Secret Level (movie games), finished to sell Visual Concept for 3 bucks and then the Sonic Team pissed on our face with Sonic 06.
Nonetheless, you should be more specific when you say "trash publisher" since it was more "mixed" than "garbage" for several reasons.
As Dooble said, the post Dreamcast Era (before 2006) was in fact excellent. Many Sega boys were too impatient without a global eye on the subject. Of course, many easy dreamcast ports were not breathtaking (but necessary) but PS2, X Box and gamecube exclusives were awesome and aged very well (cannot say the same for all Dreamcast games). Panzer Dragoon Orta, Otogi, Virtua Fighter 4 Evo and F-Zero GX were fantastic.
We must also keep in mind that even in the darkest era Sega of Japan kept delivering very good games games. For instance, Yakuza landed in the west in 2006 and Am2 released Virtua Fighter 5, After Burner Climax in the arcades.
That very mixed period more or less ended with the departure of that parasite president of Sega of America and the end of Secret Level in 2010.
But since 2005, another force with Sega of Japan (except Sonic Team) was doing a tremendous job for the Sega Brand, it was Sega Europe.
The president of Sega Europe bought great studios like The Creative Assembly, tried successful revivals like HOD Overkill, Castle of Illusion Remake or failures like the Sega Racing Studio (but Sega Rally Revo was a good game, Sega Rally 3 a hidden gem).
This man also became president of Sega America in 2009 (he closed Secret Level, thanks God) and pushed hard to make of Alien Isolation an all time classic when Sega of Japan punched hard with games like Valkyria Chronicles.
After the departure of the mad king of america, Sega had less garbage movie games and many classics in the second part of PS360 era with Yakuza 4, Bayonetta, Vanquish, Resonance of Fate, Sonic Generations, Alpha Protocol, Condemned 2, Sonic Colors, Binary Domain, Anarchy Reigns, Mad world, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Shodown, Sonic All Star Racing Transformed. It was a pretty good moment for curious gamers.
Then most of those IPs bombed and Sega had a slow down on new IPs for PS4 and XBone but delivers now extremely solid outputs.
(for instance since the PS4, Capcom and Nintendo lowest metacritic years are 71% which is a usual year for Sony, Namco, Konami, or Ubi are sometimes at 68%,69%. Sega's lowest year this gen is 73% and most of the time over 75% since Haruki Satomi became president. He is one the reason of such high scores and not Atlus as many can suspect. When Atlus and Sega scores were separated during the current era, Atlus was under Sega by a margin of 0,6)
As you can see, Sega's history was not that black and white. 2020 is a turning point since Sega will probably announce two of the biggest games of its history, two new IPs, the first one by the top developer from Sega West (TCA), the other one by Sega of Japan (ATLUS + Sega CS1 and/or CS2). What is your favorite Sega Studio by the way ha ha ha ?(i can't help myself with this poll but this is the last time, i wan't to know the state of Sega boys 2020 :), i'm pathetic, i know)
Last edited: