Sega of America

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Sega of America (SoA) is the company responsible for Sega's North American (i.e. the United States, Canada and Mexico) operations.

SoA is largely considered to be Sega's second base of operations, following Sega of Japan which ultimately makes the final decisions. Sega of America was Sega's second attempt at cracking the US market - its first, a company known as "Sega Enterprises, Inc." had previously make traction in the region in the late 1970s and early 1980s, only to have much of its assets sold to Paramount in the wake of the North American video game crash of 1983. Sega subsequently pulled back for a few months (establishing a relationship with Bally Midway for arcade and home console distribution), but re-entered the market some time later with the intent of marketing the Sega Master System to the American populace.

Since the mid-1980s, Sega of America's primary role has been to localise Japanese games for English-speaking regions. It was established relatively early on that an American presence was needed for Sega as the Japanese executives did not understand the American market well enough, although differences in opinion and mismanagement between the two "sides" led to much friction during the 1990s, with some believing this ultimately led to Sega's pull-out of the console hardware market in 2001.

At first, Sega of America allied with Tonka for Master System distribution, though following the launch of the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in North America), it began to play a much more significant role in the industry. Sega of America's efforts greatly influenced the video game industry as we know it today (for example, it created the VRC ratings board, which led to first industry-wide system, the ESRB)

For many years it was believed that America could not produce video games to Japanese standards - SoA's first home-grown game, Monopoly needed to be "saved" from poor quality production and impending delays in 1988, and this trend often continued, with SoA adopting a policy of quantity over quality (attempting to develop and publish significantly more games than rivals Nintendo to give the impression that Sega systems were backed by more developers, and were hence seen as superior). It began to create hardware (such as the Sega 32X), and later branched out into other areas through the likes of SegaSoft, only to be reeled back in by Japan towards the end of the 90s and greatly reduced in size (and power).

Today, like Sega Europe, Sega of America primarily exists to assist in localisation and deal with public relations, with the majority of actual development being done in Japan (or by external companies). At its peak in the early 1990s, SoA developed games through small internal studios, Sega Technical Institute and via various "second party" companies such as BlueSky Software and Western Technologies. It is responsible for franchsies such Ecco the Dolphin and Eternal Champions, and invested significant amounts of funds into sports games (often released under the Sega Sports banner). Relationships were also very close to Electronic Arts.