SEGA

is a multinational Japanese video game software and hardware development company, and a former home computer and console manufacturer. The company has had success with both arcades and home consoles, but in early 2001, it left the consumer console business and began concentrating on software development for multiple platforms.
Sega's main offices, as well as the main offices of its domestic division, Sega Corporation (Japan), are located in Ota, Tokyo, Japan. Sega's European division, Sega Europe Ltd., is headquartered in the Chiswick area of London. Sega's North American division, Sega of America Inc., is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The North American division moved from Redwood City, California in 1999. Until 2000, Sega's official corporate name was 'Sega Enterprises Ltd.'.

Contents

History

1940–1988

1989–2001

2001-2005

2006

2007

Recognized company personnel

In-house studios

Subsidary studios

Hardware

Arcade boards

Consoles

Handhelds

Advertisement campaigns

References

External links

History

1940–1988

Sega was originally founded in 1940 as 'Standard Games' (later 'Service Games') in Honolulu, Hawaii [1], by Martin Bromely, Irving Bromberg, and James Humpert to provide coin-operated amusements for American servicemen on military bases. Bromely suggested that the company move to Tokyo, Japan in 1951 and in May 1952 "'SE'rvice 'GA'mes of Japan" was registered.
In 1954, another American businessman David Rosen fell in love with Tokyo and established his own company, Rosen Enterprises, Inc., in Japan to export art. When the company imported coin-operated instant photo booths, it stumbled on a surprise hit: The booths were very popular in Japan. Business was booming, and Rosen Enterprises expanded by importing coin-operated electro-mechanical games.
Rosen Enterprises and Service Games merged in 1965 to make Sega Enterprises. Within a year, the new company released a submarine-simulator game called "Periscope" that became a smash-hit worldwide.
In 1969, Gulf+Western purchased Sega, and Rosen was allowed to remain CEO of the Sega division. Under Rosen's leadership, Sega continued to grow and prosper.
In the videogame arcades, Sega was known for producing Frogger and creating Zaxxon.
Sega's revenues would hit $214 million by 1982 and in 1983, Sega would release its first video game console, the SG-1000, the first 3D arcade video game, ''Subroc-3D'', which used a special periscope viewer to deliver individual images to each eye, and the first action-based laserdisc arcade game, Astron Belt.
In the same year, Sega was hit hard by the American video game crash. Hemorrhaging money, Gulf+Western sold the U.S. assets of Sega to famous pinball manufacturer Bally Manufacturing Corporation. The Japanese assets of Sega were purchased for $38 million by a group of investors led by Rosen and Hayao Nakayama, a Japanese businessman who owned a distribution company that had been acquired by Rosen in 1979. Nakayama became the new CEO of Sega, and Rosen became head of its subsidiary in the United States.
In 1984, the multi-billion dollar Japanese conglomerate CSK bought Sega, renamed it to Sega Enterprises Ltd., headquartered it in Japan, and two years later, shares of its stock were being traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. David Rosen's friend, Isao Okawa, the chairman of CSK, became chairman of Sega.
In 1986, Sega of America was established to take advantage of the resurgent video game market in the United States.
Sega would also release the Sega Master System and the first Alex Kidd game, who would be SEGA's mascot until 1991 when Sonic the Hedgehog took over. While the Master System failed to seriously rival the NES in both America and Japan, the it did manage to dominate the European and Brazilian markets until Sega discontinued the system in 1996.

1989–2001

With the introduction of the Sega Mega Drive (known as 'Sega Genesis' in North America), and to carry the momentum to the 2nd generation of games, Sega of America launched a direct anti-Nintendo campaign with slogans such as "You can't do this on Nintendo" and "Genesis does what Nintendon't"; When Nintendo launched its Super Nintendo Entertainment System, in 1991, Sega changed its slogan to "Welcome to the next level". Early on Sega's main line of games consisted of ports of their highly popular arcade games, such as Altered Beast, the Golden Axe series and the Shinobi series.
In 1991, in an all out effort to smash the upcoming Super Nintendo before it left the stable, Sega rebranded itself with a new mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, and implied that Sonic, given his attitude-focus and fluid gameplay, was cooler than Mario, Nintendo's mascot. This shift led to a wider success for the Mega Drive and would eventually propel Sega to 65% of the market in North America. Simultaneously, after much previous delay, Sega released the moderately successful Sega CD as an add-on feature, allowing for extra storage in games due to their CD-Rom format, giving developers the ability to make longer, more sophisticated games, the most popular of which was Sega’s own Sonic CD.
In 1992 Sega lost the Sega v. Accolade case, which involved independently produced software for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console that copied a small amount of Sega's code. The verdict set a precedent that copyrights do not extend to non-expressive content in software that is required by another system to be present in order for that system to run the software. The case in question stems from the nature of the console video game market. Hardware companies often sell their systems at or below cost, and rely on other revenue streams such as in this case, game licensing. Sega was attempting to "lock out" game companies from making Mega Drive/Genesis games unless they paid Sega a fee (ostensibly to maintain a consistent level of quality of games for their system.) Their strategy was to make the hardware reject any cartridge that did not include a Sega trademark. If an unlicensed company included this trademark in their game, Sega could sue the company for trademark infringement. Though Sega lost this lawsuit, all later Sega systems seemed to incorporate a similar hardware requirement.
The 1993 release of Virtua Fighter was widely held as one the greatest achievements in Sega's history; utilizing their newest arcade cabinet, the Sega Model 1, they managed to create graphics and gameplay that were, at the time, revolutionary, as recognized by the Smithsonian Institution, which has a Virtua Fighter cabinet on display. As well as being a massive critical success, the game was a smash hit with consumers, spawning four direct sequels, as well as the 3D Fighting genre.
Sega followed that success in 1994 with Daytona USA, an equally impressive game that was the first to connect arcade cabinets together for multiplayer use. The success of Daytona USA would be unparalleled in the history of the arcades, becoming the most profitable game ever released in that medium.
However, despite their advances in the arcades, Sega’s share of the home market would plummet by 1994 to 35% after Nintendo released key franchise titles for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System such as ''Donkey Kong Country'' and ''Super Metroid'', along with an internal shift in focus away from the Genesis to Sega's upcoming Saturn and the release of the Sega 32X, a disastrous blunder as it was abandoned almost upon release, despite relatively high demand (Sega never even filled the advance orders). The quick manner in which Sega dropped the console left many early adopters disgruntled in Sega’s arrogance and ignored the Saturn in the following year. Also in 1994, Sega launched the Sega Channel, a subscription gaming service delivered by local cable companies affiliated with Time-Warner Cable or TCI through which subscribers received a special cartridge adaptor that connected to the cable connection. At its peak, the Sega Channel had approximately 250,000 subscribers.
In 1995 Sega released the Sega Saturn with Virtua Fighter which utilized a 32 bit processor and preceded both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. However, poor sales in the west (including the traditional stronghold markets in Europe) led to the console being abandoned within three years. Ironically, it was Sega's only success in its home country of Japan, where it managed to outpace the Playstation well into 1996, and soundly defeated the Nintendo 64.
In 1997 Sega entered into a short-lived merger with Bandai. However it was later called off, citing "cultural differences" between the two companies. Around the same time, Sega announced that the Saturn was not Sega’s future and quickly began moving high profile titles (most notoriously Virtua Fighter 3) over to their upcoming next generation game console, the Dreamcast. Entertainment fun center GameWorks, was founded in 1997 as well as the now defunct Sega World theme parks.
With one last effort for Sega to redeem itself from the overwhelming debt incurred by Saturn‘s worldwide failure and their own lavish spending, the Sega Dreamcast was launched in Japan in 1998 and in North America on September 9, 1999 (with the marketing ploy 9/9/99). The Dreamcast, at the time, became the fastest-selling video game console until the 2000 launch of Sony's PlayStation 2. . The Dreamcast was widely considered ahead of its time and Sega often featured revolutionary technology on their latest games; Seaman’s voice recognition, Chu Chu Rocket as the first online console game, Phantsy Star Online as the first console MMORPG, Jet Set Radio’s cel-shading technology, and so on and so forth.
Although the Dreamcast had a successful release, and many well received games, it failed to gather a foothold in the market against the Sony PlayStation 2.
In 2000, ''Sega Enterprises, Ltd.'' was renamed ''Sega Corporation''. It’s nine “AM” studios were given autonomy as second party developers and quickly proceeded to make some of the most hallowed games in Sega’s history.
In 2001, Sega discontinued the Dreamcast and ended its run as a video game hardware manufacturer, to the shock of the industry.

2001-2005

2001 would see a major shift in focus for Sega as it would move out of the home console market.
The company has since evolved primarily into a platform-agnostic software company, known as a "third-party publisher", that creates games that will work on a variety of game consoles produced by other companies, many of them formal rivals.
Arcade units were still being produced under the Sega NAOMI name, with subsequent releases of further arcade hardware including Sega NAOMI 2, Sega HIKARU, Sega Chihiro, Triforce (in collaboration with Nintendo and Namco) and the Sega Lindbergh. Sega today is the major force in the arcade industry today, virtually controlling the market.
In 2003, Sega fell on extremely hard times, and after the death of CSK founder Isao Okawa in 2001, who spent over US$40 billion to help Sega, CSK put Sega on the auction block. The first suitor was Japan's Sammy who discussed a merger, but plans fell through. Discussions also took place with Namco, Bandai, Electronic Arts and Microsoft.
In August 2003, Sammy bought the outstanding 22% of shares that CSK had, and Sammy chairman Hajime Satomi became CEO of Sega. With the Sammy chairman at the helm of Sega, it has been stated that Sega's activity will focus on its profit-making arcade business rather than its loss-making home software development.
During the middle of 2004, Sammy bought a controlling share in Sega Corporation at a cost of $1.1 billion, creating the new company Sega Sammy Holdings, one of the biggest games companies in the world. With the merger, Sega reabsorbed its second party studios and began to reorganize them.. Many Sega employees, most notably Tetsuya Mizuguchi, walked out in protest.
On January 25, 2005, Sega sold Visual Concepts, a studio Sega dubbed a "1.5" developer, to Take Two Interactive for $24 million. Sega used the parlance "1.5" as a mid-point of sorts between first-party and second-party developer status: that is, a wholly owned studio that would otherwise be known as a first-party developer, but was outside of internal development teams. Visual Concepts was known for many Sega Sports games including the ''ESPN NFL Football'' series, formerly NFL2K. The sale also came with Visual Concept's wholly-owned subsidiary Kush Games. Take Two subsequently announced the start of the publishing label 2K Games because of this purchase.

2006

With net income on the rise the previous year, SEGA begun the new year with a revision of its forecast thanks to the strong sells upon multiple division of the period ending December 31, 2005 as reported in February, although the strongest contributing factors being the strong Pachinko sales [2] strong software sales of Ryu Ga Gotoku (Know as Yakuza in the West) and Mushi King in Japan and Shadow the Hedgehog in Europe and the US also helped to bolster the company’s profits.
In the manner of continuing SEGA’s constant drive of appealing to the West, they signed up Obsidian Entertainment to help them develop a new RPG for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in late March, [3] in a line of Western partnerships SEGA have made with the likes of Monolith Productions (), Bizarre Creations (The Club) and Silicon Knights (who have yet to announce their project with SEGA)
That desire to have a more Western appeal for SEGA was shortly followed up by SEGA acquiring British developer Sports Interactive (Famed developers of cortically and commercially successful game series, Football Manager) after a successful run of publishing Football Manager 2005 and 2006, in which they managed to sell 1.5 million copies [4] the deal was said to be worth in the region of GBP 30 million ($52 million) by Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive’s Managing Director [5] This was, however, not the only developer SEGA had acquired, they also purchased America developer Secret Level (Best know for developing Karaoke Revolution and ) although the terms of the deal was not disclosed [6], Secret Level had however begun work before being bought by SEGA to “recreate a classic SEGA franchise" for the PS3 and Xbox 360 July 2005, which was revealed to be Golden Axe later that year.
While SEGA continued its expansion in the West, on May 8, 2006, it was announced SEGA of Japan begun helping famed SEGA developer and Sonic Team head Yuji Naka (known for being the main programmer for the original Sonic the Hedgehog games and NiGHTS) to start up his own company titled "Prope" (Latin for "beside" and "near future" [7]) in which SEGA helped provide 10% startup capital [8] and have the option to publish games produced from the studio if they wished to.
Due to the continued success of SEGA’s software sales, the company reported on May 17, 2006 a 31% rise in net profits from that of the previous year of the period ending March 31, 2006, being posted at ¥66.2 billion ($577 million), as well as a increase in operating profit growing by 13% from the previous year, being posted at ¥553.2 billion ($4.82 billion) [9] notable titles to have helped SEGA increase profits in the West being that of Shadow the Hedgehog (Which sold a excess of a million copies [10]) and Sonic Riders, whilst in Japan, games such as Yakuza, Mushi King and Brain Trainer Portable continued to sell strong.
Though, whilst SEGA had shown promise to continue a increase in its profits, the company reported a massive drop of 93% profits for the period ending June 30, 2006 compared to the same period last of year. Net income for the company dropped form $98.3 million (a year earlier) to $7.12 million for this period ending as well of total sells dropping from $926.5 million to $809.1 million [11], SEGA reported that the decrease in profits was due to no significant big releases by its slot machine division. However, a total of 2.1 million games were sold between the period, 870,000 in the US, 680,000 in Europe and 580,000 in Asia. Despite this, SEGA Sammy said that the results were in line with their expectations and did not amend their fully year forecasts.
Despite this, SEGA reported in November a massive 52% rise in profits for the periods between April and September 2006, compared to the same period last year. [12] Software sales for the company had also increased with 5.75 million. Of those units, 1.76 million were sold in Japan, 1.59 million in Europe, 2.36 million in the US and 30,000 in other regions. [13] a number of titles were said to have preformed well, in particular Super Monkey Ball Adventure for the Nintendo DS and Football Manager 2006 for the Xbox360 having sold well. While SEGA preformed better in 2006, they had slashed their forecasts for the year ending March 2007 by 20% with a anticipated profit of $536.7 million, down from the initial profits of $656.7 million.
Continuing to prepare more games for the Western market, SEGA was able to bridge a partnership with New Line Cinema in September to develop a game for the movie tie-in game The Golden Compass [14] and also partnered themselves with Fox to develop two new games based off of the Alien franchise [15] SEGA had then assigned critically acclaimed developers Gearbox software to develop a first person shooter and Obsidian Entertainment to develop a movie based on the popular film franchise, while the platforms are still to be specified, SEGA have both titles are in pre-production and one of them is set to release in 2009. [16]

2007

1 June 2007 After less than two years of operation in China, Sega China is rumored to be pulling out of China.
According to various local media, the company sent an internal email to all its employees saying that they had to dissolve the online games business department due to inadequate operations. Each employee will get an amount of compensation depending on the duration they worked with the company and the position they took at the company, but the compensation amount shall not be less than three months' salary of each employee.[17]

Recognized company personnel

★ In alphabetical order
'Corporate Division'
'American'

★ Bernie Stolar: Recruited from Sony, President SOA (1997 – 1999)

★ Charles Bellfield:

★ David Rosen: Co-Founder, Board Member

★ Ken Balthaser: Former SOA head of development 1989-

★ Michael Katz: President SOA (1985 - 1990)

★ Peter Moore: Vice President (199X – 1999) President SOA (1999 – 2003)

★ Scott Steinberg: Vice president of marketing SOA 2003 - .

★ Simon Jeffery: Recruited from Lucas Arts, Simon Jeffery President SOA (2003 - )

★ Tom Kalinske: President SOA (1990 – 1997), Former Board Member (199X – 199X)
Trip Hawkins: President Electronic Arts, Sega Ally
'Australian'
'European'
'Japanese'

★ Hayao Nakayama: Co-Founder, President SOJ (19XX-2001)

★ Isao Okawa: President SOJ 2000 - 2001 (died shortly after Dreamcast was discontinued & donated 700 million US$ to Sega Corporation.{Citation|August}

★ Soichiro Irimajiri: President SOJ 1998 - 2000

★ Yukawa Hidekazu: Aka Mr.Dreamcast, is the man on the Dreamcast boxes in Japan, has an appearance in What's Shenmue and also an own little Dreamcast Game (I call it "Yukawa Hidekazu Treasure Hunting", don't know the exact title).
'Video Game Hardware Division'

★ Hideki Sato Designer of all major hardware
'Video Game Software Division'

★ Toshihiro Nagoshi: Head of NE R&D 1.

★ Mie Kumagai : Head of AM R&D 3, only female head of a studio.

★ Yuji Naka: Co-creator of company mascot, owns independent studio, 10% funded by Sega.

★ Yu Suzuki: Head of AM Plus R&D (AKA NE R&D 2, DigitalRex).

In-house studios

'Global Entertainment Software R&D', which was led by Yuji Naka until 2006. "GE" currently focuses on developing video games for home consoles.

Department	Members From	Headed By	Notable Titles
G.E. Dept. #1,	Sonic Team	Akinori Nishiyama	''Sonic and the Secret Rings, Phantasy Star Universe, Fifth Phantom Saga
G.E Dept. #2	United Game Artists	Akira Nishino	''Project Rub, The Rub Rabbits, Sonic Riders, Astro Boy,
Sega Studio USA	Sonic Team USA	Takashi Iizuka	''Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Nights 2
Mobile Content R&D	New Studio	Kazunari Tsukamoto	''Brain Trainer Portable
Sega Studio China	New Studio	Makoto Uchida	''None as of now

'Amusement Software R&D', which currently focus' on the development of games for arcade machines.

Department	Members From	Headed By	Notable Titles
AM.1 R&D	WOW Entertainment+ Overworks	Atsushi Seimiya	''House of the Dead'' series, ''Shinobi'' series, ''Sakura Taisen'' series, Skies of Arcadia
AM.2 R&D	Sega-AM2	Hiroshi Kataoka	''Virtua Fighter'' series, ''Virtua Cop'' series, ''Out Run'' series, ''Shenmue'' series, ''After Burner'' series, ''Sword of Vermilion''
AM.3 R&D	Hitmaker + Sega Rosso	Mie Kumagai	''Crazy Taxi'' series, ''Virtual On'' series, ''Virtua Tennis'' series, "Initial D Arcade Stage" series
Family Entertainment	New Department	Hiroshi Uemura	''Mushi King'' series, ''Love and Berry DS Collection''
Sports Design R&D	Smilebit [18]	Takayuki Kawagoe	''Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, ''Let's Make a J-League Soccer Team'' series, ''Let's Make a J-League Baseball Team'' series

'New Entertainment R&D', which is led by each department head. "NE" currently focus' on the development of new content for the arcade and home console markets.

Department	Members From	Headed By	Notable Titles
NE.1 R&D	Amusement Vision, Ltd.+ Smilebit	Toshihiro Nagoshi	''Super Monkey Ball'' series, ''Shining Force Neo'', ''Yakuza'' (''Ryū ga Gotoku'')
AMPlus R&D	Digitalrex	Yu Suzuki	''Psy-Phi'', Shenmue Online

Subsidary studios

Subsidiary studios, the first of which being acquired or founded in 2005, have been the cornerstone of an internal shift within Sega to appeal to a more Western audience.

Department	Division	Year of purchase/founding	Notable Titles
Secret Level	Sega of America	2005	''Golden Axe'', ''Iron Man (video game)''
Sega Racing Studio	Sega of Europe	2005	''Sega Rally Revo''
The Creative Assembly	Sega of Europe	2005	''Total War'', ''Total Warrior'' series
Sports Interactive	Sega of Europe	2006	''Football Manager'' series
Prope	Sega of Japan	2006	None as of now

Detailed list of Sega internal atructure at Sega Studios & Video Games

Hardware

Arcade boards

★ Sega System 1 ★ Sega System 2 ★ Sega System E ★ Sega System 16 ★ Sega System 18 ★ Sega System 24 ★ Sega System 32 ★ Sega System C2 ★ Sega Model 1

★ Sega Model 2 ★ Sega Model 3 ★ Sega Titan Video ★ Sega NAOMI ★ Sega NAOMI 2 ★ Sega HIKARU ★ Sega Chihiro ★ Triforce – in collaboration with Nintendo and Namco ★ Sega Lindbergh

Consoles

★ Sega SG-1000: Available in limited markets

★ Sega SG-1000 Mark II: Updated model now with a keyboard

★ Sega SG-1000 Mark III: Only available in Japan

★ Sega SC-3000: A computer version of the SG-1000

★ Sega SC-3000H: An updated version with more RAM and keyboard (the original keyboard was of the low-end membrane type).

★ Sega Master System: Essentially the SG-1000 Mark III only with a different name a few minor adjustments

★ Sega Mega Drive: Known as the Sega Genesis in North America

★ Sega Mega CD: Known simply as the Sega CD for the North American market, it allowed CD based games as well as Audio CDs to be played on the Mega Drive.

★ Sega 32X: Hardware update to the Mega Drive allowing 32 bit based games to be played

★ Sega Multi-Mega: a portable CD player with the functionalities of a Sega Mega Drive and Sega Mega CD. Following the ''Mega ...'' brands, its name was Multi-Mega in the majority of the world and Genesis CDX in North America.

★ Sega TeraDrive: A 16-bit PC with an integrated Mega Drive. Came with a Software Development Kit to allow creation of Mega Drive games. The system was only released in Japan.

★ Amstrad Mega PC: TeraDrive for Europe & Australia

★ Sega Neptune: A Sega Mega Drive/32X hybrid. It never passed the prototype stage. Only two empty cases are known to exist.

★ Sega Saturn: True 32-bit console

★ Sega Dreamcast: First 128 bit console, Sega's last console

★ Sega Pico: an educational gaming system.

Handhelds

★ Game Gear: Sega’s 8-bit handheld

★ Sega Nomad: Sega’s Mega Drive, in a portable unit

★ Sega Mega Jet: A Mega Drive unit only available on Japan Airlines flights

Advertisement campaigns

Sega has had a long history of different slogans and ad campaigns.
'Arcade'

★ The Arcade Experts. (early 80s)
'Sega Master System'

★ The challenge will always be there.

★ Now, there are no limits.

★ Hot hits today! More hits on the way!

★ Do me a favor, plug me into a Sega (talking TV).
'Mega Drive/Genesis'

★ Genesis does what Nintendon't! (During the Sega/Nintendo console wars)

★ Blast Processing

★ The "''SEGA!!! ''"scream.

★ Welcome To The Next Level.

★ To be this good takes AGES, To be this good takes SEGA.

★ Siga Sega! ("Follow Sega!", used in Brazil during the early 90's)

★ Sega, c'est plus fort que toi ! ('Sega, it's stronger than you!', cult French TV slogan, early 90s)

★ 16 bit arcade graphics!

★ La Ley del Más Fuerte (The Law of the most strong, Spanish slogan from 1993-94)

★ The more you play with it, the harder it gets.

★ Pirate TV (Britain)
'Saturn'

★ Welcome to the Real World - Sega Saturn. (Early UK TV slogan)

★ Segata Sanshiro

★ Fly, plaything, fly. You're not ready.

★ The Game is Never Over (also used in last European Mega Drive commercials.)

★ Peligrosamente real (Dangerously Real. 1st Spanish slogan)
'Dreamcast'

★ It's Thinking. (promotion for Dreamcast)

★ Up to 6 billion players. (early Dreamcast tagline)
'Post Dreamcast years (2002 - 2003)'

★ The return of the SEGA!!! Scream.

References

★ Sega financial report

★ Yahoo! Finance details for Sega Corporation

★ Yahoo! Finance details for Sega of America

★ Sega's entry into and growth in the American market is documented in Terry Sanders' film ''The Japan Project: Made in Japan''.

External links

★ Sega of America's official website

★ Sega of Europe's official website

★ Sega Sammy Holdings official website