Sega's new Crazy Taxi game “AAA” in scope

The upcoming return of Crazy Taxi will be a “AAA” game, Sega has said.

Sega first announced it was making a long-awaited new Crazy Taxi title in December last year, as part of a new wave of entries in many of its classic series.

Now, to Japan Times interview has shed more light on its scope, and revealed it is being worked on in part by Sega's relatively new Sapporo Studio, which was founded in the capital of Japan's Hokkaido prefecture in December 2021.

It sounds like Sapporo Studio is only contributing to the game, however, as the company isn't currently developing any project independently

“The studio has an R&D department that handles designing and programming games and a QA department in charge of quality control,” Sega Sapporo studio boss Takaya Segawa said. “Recruitment in R&D is progressing as expected, but for QA we received more applications than anticipated, so a second branch of Sapporo Studio opened in April 2023.”

Back in December, Sega said its new Crazy Taxi will offer “innovative and fresh style driving action” that will evoke a “cheerful feeling of freedom” mixed with the “fusion of nature and city.”

Wrote Sega: “Peel out the new stage of Crazy City!”

Sega has also announced new entries in its Golden Ax, Shinobi and Streets of Rage series, as well as a fresh open-world version of Jet Set Radio. (No word yet on a new Skies of Arcadia.)