History of Sega in India
From Sega Retro
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History of Sega in India |
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Official Sega distributor(s): Shaw Wallace Electronics (1995), Mitashi Edutainment (1995-1999), SPA Enterprises (2000-2004) , New Era (2005-2012) , E-xpress Interactive (2012-present) |
India were treated internally as being part of the "Asian" region, which effectively equates to everything east of Europe excluding Japan and South Korea (and presumably countries Sega could not market their products for legal reasons).
Video game piracy was rampant in India which can throw research off course. Many products were imported from other Asian regions and presumably the likes of Europe, Japan and North America. India uses the PAL-B format for televisions, meaning any Asian products with an NTSC sticker were not intended for India.
Starting in spring 1995, Sega Mega Drive consoles were distributed by Shaw Wallace Electronics, an off-shoot of a liquour company, with an asking price of 18,000 rupees. Only the second Mega Drive model was sold - the original model did not make it to the region. [1]
In end of 1995, the sale of Sega games was taken by Mitashi Edutainment (At the time, Maze Marketing) which said that it could better promote Sega consoles. In addition to Mega Drive II, company sold Sega Saturn at lower prices.Sega of Japan has developed a new sales strategy. For 14,660 rupees people could get console along with Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and Sonic the Hedgehog. Another set was created in which Brian Lara Cricket was added because cricket was the best-known sport in India.The new strategy has been successful and even consoles from the former Shaw Wallace distribution have been sold. Between 1997 and 1998, the market in India began to change and the sale of video games dropped especially due to the low interest of Nintendo, Sega and Sony in this region.In 1999, the company resigned and decided to sell clones of 8-bit consoles.In the sale of clones, the company was inspired by the strategy of Sega which was used earlier in India.The first console sold by Mitashi contained Cricket, which increased the popularity of their new hardware.[2] Also released 16-bit clones modeled on Mega Drive, including Game In Xtreme.
In 2000, SPA Enterprises became a representative of Sega and started to sell Sega Dreamcast consoles with Starcon India and Data Acces India.[3]
New Era since 2005 was a distributor [4].Nowadays, Sega distributor in India is E-xpress Interactive[5].They also distributed Sega games released by Empire in the series under the name E-Value.
References
- ↑ http://scanlines16.com/en/blog-3/retro-gaming/sega-megadrive/jeux-megadrive-asia/
- ↑ https://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/features/tracing-the-origins-of-gaming-in-india-8-bit-cricket-sega-and-cloning-640129
- ↑ http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/11/22/dreamcast-heads-to-india
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20050831023756/http://www.neweraonline.com:80/corp/games.htm
- ↑ http://www.expressgames.in/