Last Online: 8/7/07
Sega
Sega Corporation is an international video game software and hardware developing company, and a former home computer and console manufacturer. The company has had success in both arcades and the home console market, but in early 2001, they left the consumer console business and began concentrating on software development for multiple platforms. Many "old-school" gamers consider Sega as Nintendo's greatest rival in the 8 bit and 16 bit console wars.
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Career Summary
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 "SErvice GAmes 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 their 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 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 expanding video game market in the United States. Sega would also release the Sega Master System and the first Alex Kidd game, who would be their mascot until 1991 when Sonic the Hedgehog took over.
[edit] 1989-2001
Sonic the Hedgehog has been Sega's mascot for over fifteen years.
Sonic the Hedgehog has been Sega's mascot for over fifteen years.
With the introduction of the Sega Mega Drive, and to carry the momentum to the 2nd generation of games, Sega of America launched a direct anti-Nintendo campaign with slogans such as "Genesis does what Nintendon't". Sega also rebranded themselves 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, or Genesis as it is known in North America, and would eventually propel Sega to 65% of the market in North America.
However, Sega's share of the market would plummet in 1994 to 35% after Nintendo released key franchise titles for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System such as Donkey Kong Country and Super Metroid, as well as bad public reaction in Sega's eventual business decisions when releasing poorly sold add-on features to the console such as the Sega 32X and the Sega CD.
An add-on feature, Sega Channel, was released in 1994. Sega Channel was a subscription gaming service delivered by local cable companies affiliated with Time-Warner Cable or TCI; 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 led to the console being abandoned within 3 years.
Those products failed to captivate the North American audience and thus led to a long decline in the console market for Sega. With one last effort for Sega to redeem themselves from overwhelming debt, 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. [citation needed]
Although the Dreamcast had a successful release, it failed to gather a foothold in the market against the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. The release of the PlayStation 2 sealed the fate of the Dreamcast.
In 2000, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. was renamed Sega Corporation. In 2001, Sega discontinued the Dreamcast and ended its run as a video game hardware manufacturer.
[edit] 2001 and beyond
2001 would see a major shift in focus for Sega as they would move out of the home console market. The company has since evolved primarily into a platform-agnostic software company, known in some gamer circles as a "third-party publisher", that creates games that will work on a variety of game consoles produced by other companies, including Nintendo's GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, the Wii, Sony's PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Portable, and Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360. Arcade units are still being produced under the Sega NAOMI name.
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.
Sega recently bought the rights to all output from Sports Interactive, makers of Football Manager, the old Championship Manager.
On January 25, 2005, Sega sold Visual Concepts, a second-party developer known for many Sega Sports games including the ESPN NFL Football series, formerly NFL2K, to Take Two Interactive for $24 million. 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.
On March 9, 2005 Sega acquired developer Creative Assembly best known for their strategy games Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War.
On September 12, 2005, It was announced that Sega would be working with Petroglyph to create a Modern Military/Sci-fi Real-time strategy game for PC. [2]
Late in 2006, Sega announced that they will produce several games based on the Alien series, including a platformer and an RPG.
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 "SErvice GAmes 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 their 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 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 expanding video game market in the United States. Sega would also release the Sega Master System and the first Alex Kidd game, who would be their mascot until 1991 when Sonic the Hedgehog took over.
[edit] 1989-2001
Sonic the Hedgehog has been Sega's mascot for over fifteen years.
Sonic the Hedgehog has been Sega's mascot for over fifteen years.
With the introduction of the Sega Mega Drive, and to carry the momentum to the 2nd generation of games, Sega of America launched a direct anti-Nintendo campaign with slogans such as "Genesis does what Nintendon't". Sega also rebranded themselves 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, or Genesis as it is known in North America, and would eventually propel Sega to 65% of the market in North America.
However, Sega's share of the market would plummet in 1994 to 35% after Nintendo released key franchise titles for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System such as Donkey Kong Country and Super Metroid, as well as bad public reaction in Sega's eventual business decisions when releasing poorly sold add-on features to the console such as the Sega 32X and the Sega CD.
An add-on feature, Sega Channel, was released in 1994. Sega Channel was a subscription gaming service delivered by local cable companies affiliated with Time-Warner Cable or TCI; 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 led to the console being abandoned within 3 years.
Those products failed to captivate the North American audience and thus led to a long decline in the console market for Sega. With one last effort for Sega to redeem themselves from overwhelming debt, 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. [citation needed]
Although the Dreamcast had a successful release, it failed to gather a foothold in the market against the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. The release of the PlayStation 2 sealed the fate of the Dreamcast.
In 2000, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. was renamed Sega Corporation. In 2001, Sega discontinued the Dreamcast and ended its run as a video game hardware manufacturer.
[edit] 2001 and beyond
2001 would see a major shift in focus for Sega as they would move out of the home console market. The company has since evolved primarily into a platform-agnostic software company, known in some gamer circles as a "third-party publisher", that creates games that will work on a variety of game consoles produced by other companies, including Nintendo's GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, the Wii, Sony's PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Portable, and Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360. Arcade units are still being produced under the Sega NAOMI name.
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.
Sega recently bought the rights to all output from Sports Interactive, makers of Football Manager, the old Championship Manager.
On January 25, 2005, Sega sold Visual Concepts, a second-party developer known for many Sega Sports games including the ESPN NFL Football series, formerly NFL2K, to Take Two Interactive for $24 million. 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.
On March 9, 2005 Sega acquired developer Creative Assembly best known for their strategy games Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War.
On September 12, 2005, It was announced that Sega would be working with Petroglyph to create a Modern Military/Sci-fi Real-time strategy game for PC. [2]
Late in 2006, Sega announced that they will produce several games based on the Alien series, including a platformer and an RPG.
Published by Sega
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