Sega of America

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Sega of America
Founded: March 21, 1985 (as "Sega Enterprises (USA)")[1]
Headquarters:
Irvine, California, United States

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Sega of America, Inc. is the company responsible for Sega's North American operations.

History

Pre-1986

Sega has technically had a presence in the United States ever since its 1946 inception as an American entity, but it was it’s later Japanese incarnation Sega Enterprises, Ltd. that would grow to see actual success. Acquired by Gulf+Western in 1969, the purchase allowed the company to expand into the American market in 1974 with the establishment of Sega Enterprises, Inc. in Los Angeles, California. Initially importing Japanese games while producing games of their own (and even a consumer television), this American branch also traded under the name “Sega of America” for the next decade.

Eager to expand Sega’s newfound presence in the United States, the company acquired American arcade developer Gremlin Industies to become Gremlin/Sega, and with the increased production capability was able to steadily establish itself in the arcades of the early 1980s. It also began to develop arcade ports for the fledgling home market, with games being released on the Atari VCS, home computers, and other platforms. Renaming itself Sega Electronics in 1982, the division continued to produce games up until its assets were purchased by arcade manufacturer Bally Midway the next year.

Later seeking to rejoin the American market, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. would established two additional American subsidiaries: Sega Enterprises, Inc. (U.S.A)[1] on March 21, 1985 to again distribute its arcade games in the West, and Sega of America, Inc. on March 10, 1986[2][3] to assist with consumer products like the upcoming Sega Master System. The two subsidiaries co-existed for several years and both had San Francisco Bay Area offices closely nearby another.

Tonka and the Master System

In 198X Sega of America partnered with Tonka for the marketing and distribution of the Sega Master System. At this time, the American branch served mainly as a channel for bringing games to the West, and as a result Sega’s first home console saw little third-party support. Although sporting a library of quality Sega-produced titles, the console was unable to effectively establish itself in a market dominated by the wildly-popular wiki:Nintendo Entertainment System. Although choosing to discontinue its partnership with Tonka, the experience in the home console market would prove highly valuable.

Nearing the launch of what was now Sega of Japan’s upcoming 16-bit machine, American executives identified what they believed to be holding the company back, and what changes would be necessary, for eventually taking on Nintendo’s monopoly of the home market. Above all however, it was felt that the American market needed games tailored for American tastes; a philosophy would be at the heart of much of Sega of America’s methodology. Instead of waiting for the production of Japanese software, only to have to further localize them, Sega of America could establish in-house game development and produce software domestically.

While the company prepared for the release of the Sega Genesis, newly-hired Director of Product Development(?) Ken Balthaser realized many of these domestic productions would not be ready by the system’s launch. It was decided that Sega of America would contract third-party developers in the United States and Europe to ensure the Sega Genesis launched with games tailored to American tastes. Externally-developed games would be supervised by a Sega of America producer who would coordinate between the two companies, with games often being conceptualized and seen to completion by the same producer. A strong showing of quality sports games was also deemed as crucial to breaking through to the Western market, and together with the upcoming machine being leagues above what the Nintendo Entertainment System could currently provide, Sega of America was ready to introduce North America to the next generation. And it needed to show consumers that a geared-up competitor had finally arrived; one that could dethrone Nintendo.

Sega of America topples Nintendo

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With savvy marketing and smart talent, Sega began to take a significant share of what had been exclusively Nintendo’s market and soon millions of consoles were found in American homes. SoA established an edgy corporate image built around the anti-Nintendo with the brilliant Genesis Does (maybe the single most important moment in SoA history and the four words that established Sega in the US); taking more chances and being more cutting-edge tech-y, but it happened during the 1990s era of attitude-based marketing so it came off as less cool and more edgy. still it put in place the idea of sega being cooler, older, less-censored and maybe more out-there.


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During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sega of America outsourced development for a number of home console games to third-party developers, playing an advisory role throughout the development process. SoA also had a say in hardware decisions - the Sega 32X for example is an American invention, and a great deal of American-led work was put into developing the Sega Dreamcast. 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)

Struggles selling the Sega Saturn in North America led to a scaling back of internal production and consolidation of many of Sega of America’s development teams.

During the Dreamcast era, Sega of America came back strong, due to Visual Concepts and the 2K games - as well as strong marketing reminiscent of the Genesis days. Like on Saturn, the bias was more towards localizing Japanese games however. In 2005, Sega of America was hit with a large scale restructuring, with it being designed to appeal more to the Western market, due to it being becoming larger than the Japanese market. This however led to numerous questionable games, with some games being some of the worst in Sega's history. This includes licensed games The Golden Compass, Aliens: Colonial Marines and Iron Man, as well ill fated attempts to reboot SoJ franchises such as with Golden Axe: Beast Rider and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

2008-present

Sega Enterprises Inc. (U.S.A.) was merged with Sega of America, Inc. on April 1, 2008,[1] and Sega of America became the new company's name.

Around 2015, Sega was evaluating on how they should handle the American branch in the future. Effectively, SoA was relocated from San Francisco to Irvine, California, to share the same office with Atlus USA, which Sega had acquired earlier. The main purpose of the new Sega of America and Atlus USA, is to localize the Japanese games of their respective parent company. In addition, a dedicated office for the Sonic franchise in Burbank, California exists as well.

Softography

Discrete logic arcade

Master System

Mega Drive

Game Gear

Mega-CD

32X

Saturn

Dreamcast

IBM PC

Windows PC

Master System

Mega Drive

Game Gear

Sega CD

Pico

Sega 32X

Sega Saturn

Dreamcast

PlayStation 2

GameBoy Advance

Xbox

GameCube

Nintendo DS

PlayStation Portable

Xbox 360

Wii

PlayStation 3

Nintendo 3DS

Wii U

Xbox One

PlayStation 4

Nintendo Switch

PC

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 California Business Search: Entity #C1271130
  2. ↑ California Business Search: Entity #C1299989
  3. ↑ Sega Visions, "February/March 1993" (US; 199x-xx-xx), page 81
Overseas Sega companies, studios and subsidiaries
84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
CSK Sega Sammy Holdings
Sega of America
Sega Technical Institute
Sega Away Team
Sega Europe
Sega France Sega France
Sega Consumer Products S.A Sega Spain
Sega Vertriebsgesellschaft Sega Austria
Sega Interactive
Sega Deutschland Sega Germany
Sega Amusements Taiwan Sega Taiwan
Sega Denmark
Sega Belgium
Sega Netherlands
Sega Multimedia Studio
Sega Midwest Studio
Sega Amusements USA
Deith Leisure Sega Amusements Europe Sega Amusements International
Sega Total Solutions
Sega Prize Europe
Sega Music Group
SegaSoft
Sega Entertainment
Hyundai-Sega Entertainment
Sega Enterprises Israel
No Cliche
Sega of America Dreamcast
Sonic Team USA Sega Studios USA
Visual Concepts
Sega.com
Sega.com Asia
Sega of China
Sega Mobile Sega Networks Inc.
Sega Publishing Korea
The Creative Assembly
Sega (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd
Sega Benelux
Sega Studios San Francisco
Sports Interactive
Sega Studios Australia
Three Rings Design
Relic Entertainment
Atlus USA
Demiurge Studios
Go Game
Sonic Studio
Amplitude Studios
Sonic Team USA
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