Sega (1960-2013)

From Qualitipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Awesome Games Wiki.
Sega
SEGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Founded: June 3, 1960
Founder(s): Martin Bromley
Richard Stewart
Headquarters: Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan
Key people: Haruki Satomi (Chairman and CEO)
Shigeru Yamashita (Vice Chairman)
Yukio Sugino (President and COO)
Ian Curran (President, Sega​ of America)
Gary Dale (President, Sega​ Europe)
Owner: Sega Sammy Holdings
Parent: Sega Group Corporation
Subsidiaries: Amplitude Studios
Atlus
Creative Assembly
Hardlight
Relic Entertainment
Sonic Team
Sports Interactive
Two Point Studios
TMS Entertainment
Website: https://www.sega.com

Sega Corporation (Japanese: 株式会社セガ Hepburn: Kabushiki gaisha Sega) is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with multiple offices around the world.

Sega developed and manufactured numerous home video game consoles from 1983 to 2001. Still, the financial losses incurred from their 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast consoles caused the company to restructure itself in 2001, and focus on providing software as a third-party developer from then on. In 2004, Sega merged with Sammy Ltd., a pachinko machine, hotel, and travel company, and restructured itself again into a subsidiary of Sega Group Corporation, a part of Sega Sammy Holdings.

Hardware

Notable games

  • The Sonic the Hedgehog series
  • The Phantasy Star series
  • The Yakuza series
  • The Total War series
  • The Virtua Fighter series
  • The Virtua Tennis series
  • The Sega Rally series
  • The OutRun series
  • The Panzer Dragoon series
  • The Football Manager series
  • The Company of Heroes series
  • The Valkyria series
  • The Puyo Puyo series (Originally created by Compile)
  • The Bayonetta series
  • The Hatsune Miku series
  • The Initial D Arcade Stage series
  • Virtua Fighter
  • Anarchy Reigns
  • MadWorld
  • Infinite Space
  • Condemned: Criminal Origins
  • The Club
  • Alien: Isolation
  • Resonance of Fate
  • Captain America: Super Soldier
  • Renegade Ops
  • Castle Of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse
  • The Persona series (Originally created by Atlus)
  • K-On! Houkago Live!!
  • Daytona USA series

Fast Qualities

  1. Not only have they created game consoles but also many technologically advanced arcade cabinets with games such as Daytona USA. With also some games, such as Turbo, Space Harrier, and Hang On are notable for having impressive graphics for their times and being earlier examples of sprite scaling. Monaco GP was also an impressive game from 1979, as it had outstanding graphics for the time, as it was made on discrete hardware.
  2. The company has a large variety of unique, creative video game franchises, such as Seaman, Total War, Shin Megami Tensei, Yakuza, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, and the famous one being Sonic the Hedgehog.
  3. Sega has created many great games (listed above), with many of them getting re-released.
  4. They had creative innovative ideas for their consoles, such as the Dreamcast having a modem to be able to play online (albeit somewhat rudimentary due to limitations at the time) out of the box.
  5. One of the few Japanese companies that do not keep their Japanese games exclusive to Japan (at least, most of them).
  6. They created the first 3D fighting game, Virtua Fighter, which was so impressive at the time that it inspired Sony to turn the PlayStation into a 3D console.
  7. They saved Relic Entertainment from being closed down (mainly due to Jason Rubin, president of the late THQ, and co-founder of Naughty Dog, doing a smart move).
  8. They used to be a major competition for Nintendo in the early 90s.
  9. Unlike Nintendo, they're more open-minded towards fan games and don't file DMCA claims against them. They even ended up commissioning a group of fans to develop an official Sonic title.
  10. During the Genesis/Mega drive times, they allowed their games to be less censored and have blood and gore, unlike Nintendo.
  11. They even helped Atlus out of bankruptcy by purchasing their parent company, meaning their games would have been discontinued and Persona 5 wouldn't have been created if Sega hadn't purchased Atlus.
  12. They're now introducing more Puyo Puyo games to Western Audiences.
  13. Not only did they even make the Sonic franchise, but they also made the Initial D Arcade Stage series, including Initial D: The Arcade.

Slow Qualities

  1. They were notorious for poor management and terrible decisions that led to them making a large number of mistakes, even though, they're slowly improving over time. They dropped from the hardware market and, for a while, they seemed to only care about and milk their mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog to death. Because of this, Sega has become noteworthy on the Crappy Games Wiki, and even before their downfall, despite somewhat recovering, they made some mistakes.
  2. They cancelled the release of Streets of Rage 4 on the Saturn because Bernie Stolar (their President at the time, and the same person who discontinued the Saturn early) had somehow never heard of the franchise, despite releasing three SoR games on the Genesis/Mega Drive. Ironically, SOR4 was eventually announced in late August 2018 and released in 2020.
  3. They released too many consoles and accessories only to discontinue them quickly whenever they didn't sell well. At one point Sega had at least five different 32-bit consoles announced at once, of which only the 32X and the Saturn were actually released and both flopped hard.
  4. All of their consoles (except for the Game Gear and SG-1000) have Regional lockout.
  5. Sega of Japan frequently bullied Sega of America and often got their way when it came to corporate decisions. The Sega Saturn's development is arguably Sega of Japan at its absolute worst, as they not only forced Sega of America to launch the console in North America four months ahead of the PlayStation, but they also rejected Sega of America's desire to work with Sony on the PlayStation (despite likely having a better outcome).
  6. They made Mega Man: The Wily Wars a Sega Channel exclusive in North America for no discernible reason at all. Capcom's short-sighted reasoning for this was due to "graphical issues". There was no discernible reason for Capcom and Sega to do that.
  7. In 1991, Disney gave them a license to publish a game based on the film Fantasia for the Sega Genesis due to the success of Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and the rerelease of the film in theaters on home video to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fantasia. Sega decided that instead of developing the game in-house like with Castle of Illusion, they outsourced the development of the game to Infogrames, and the game was rushed for the 1991 holiday season. The game was poorly received with most of the criticism going to the poor renditions of the film's music, bad gameplay, and horrendous controls. After finding out about the game's existence and the negative reception towards it, Roy E. Disney demanded Sega to recall all unsold copies of the game and destroy them, and thankfully in return, Disney would give Sega more Disney licenses at no further cost. This is often believed to be the reason why Disney Interactive was founded.

Trivia

  • Unlike Nintendo, Sony, Bandai Namco, Konami, Capcom, SNK, Square Enix, and Taito, Sega wasn't always a Japanese company, in fact, they were originally an American company founded in 1940 by Martin Goodman in Honolulu, Hawaii, known as Service Games, and they moved their headquarters to Japan in 1960 and merged with another American company known as Rosen Enterprises, and formed the company we now know as Sega. The name "Sega" is derived from the first two letters of the words "Service Games".

Comments

Loading comments...