Sega's corporate director Masano Maeda recently spoke to Japanese website Nikkei on the company's future plans for the ever changing gaming industry.  Maeda revealed the company, like many others, will begin focus more on developing titles that appeal to the domestic Japanese audience, but als a Western audience as well.  Right now, half of Sega's development teams work on popular worldwide titles, like Sonic games, while the other half work on Japanese-centric titles like the Yakuza series.  Madea hopes to change that, and have all teams working on popular titles worldwide, with the goal of producing a few games a year that could sell over a million copies worldwide.

Spear heading this effort will be Yakuza director Toshihiro Nagoshi.  Maeda believes Nagoshi could be the next Hideo Kojima, meaning a game director that could produce games that appeal audiences on a large scale.   In 2009, Maeda will begin to push Nagoshi on a more worldwide level.  Nagoshi is already a rather big game director in Japan, featured in advertisements for his games in the country.

Nagoshi has expressed interest in working on Western titles in the past, and even spoke alongside Hideo Kojima to Famitsu earlier this year on the subject.  He also hopes to continue to work on exclusive titles, as he believes it's those games that show true progression in the industry, according to his end of the year interview in Gemaga magazine.

Hideo Kojima was recently awarded a lifetime achievement award at GDC for his work in the industry over the past 20 years.