Electronic Arts Victor

Founded: 1992-09

Defunct: 2003-02

T-series code: T-106

Headquarters:

Tokyo, Japan

Electronic Arts Victor (エレクトロニック・アーツ・ビクター; aka EAV, EA Victor) was a joint venture of Electronic Arts (EA) and Victor Entertainment, a subsidiary of JVC, started in September 1992 in Tokyo, Japan. [1] It primarily published and localized Electronic Arts products for the Japanese market, with the intention of making the EA brand known and accepted in that country. Before then, the few EA games on Sega consoles published in Japan (such as Blockout) were published by Sega (other consoles/computers are unknown at the moment). EAV also ported several EA computer games to Japanese home computers such as the PC-98.

The joint venture appears to have dissolved (at least on the Sega side) in late 1996/early 1997; EA would publish one last Saturn game themselves in Japan, Battle Garegga, in 1998 before refusing to remain supporters of Sega platforms when the Dreamcast arrived. (They would continue to publish Saturn games overseas until the end of the year.) Whatever happened to Victor's involvement in the video game industry afterward is presently unknown.

EAV also did some in-house development, though none of it was Sega-related or on a Sega system (except for porting Cotton to the X68000).

EA later started a similar joint venture in 1998-2003 with Square called Electronic Arts Square (EA Square). After Square merged with Enix, Electronic Arts started to publish your games in Japan without having a joint.