SEGA may tie-up with EA!

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Sega Mulling Sales Ties with EA
17 minutes ago Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Yuka Obayashi

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sega Corp. said on Tuesday it was considering an offer from U.S. giant Electronic Arts Inc (EA) to form a North American sales alliance aimed at shoring up its poor performance in the world's largest gaming market. Sega Senior Officer Hisao Oguchi, who takes over as president of the video game maker in June, told Reuters in an interview that it had already received an offer to join hands with EA on North American sales of consumer video games.

But Oguchi declined to provide details of the offer and said nothing had been decided.

"Basically, our U.S. sales subsidiary will continue marketing our products in North America, but we will have to decide if that will be enough as we expand our business in the future," he said.

"We will consider forming a sales joint venture in the United States if necessary," Oguchi said. The North American market has been a thorn in Sega's side and Oguchi said the company also wants to reinforce the development of video games through alliances with local firms to attract a wider audience in the key U.S. market.

EA, one of Sega's top rivals in the U.S., is a leader in sports simulation games and last year fended off a Sega challenge to its dominance in that sector. "We have been badly beaten in the U.S. consumer video game market," said Oguchi, who was one of the principle developers behind hit Sega games such as the domestically popular Derby Owner's Club.

"If we can't resolve this on our own, then it's better to join hands with someone."

Oguchi, 43, was appointed last week to replace Hideki Sato as part of the company's effort to rebuild its credibility, which was battered by Sega's recent wavering on merger talks. Sega lost two merger candidates earlier this month when it scrapped three-month-long merger discussions with "pachinko" pinball-style game machine maker Sammy Corp as well as similar talks with video game maker Namco Ltd.

In addition to EA, Microsoft Corp has also been reported as a potential bidder for Sega but analysts said neither company would be interested in buying all of Sega, which would include its game arcade operations in Japan.

What they would want is a star development team or a franchise property -- not the sales and marketing staff or the arcade game operations, an analyst at a foreign brokerage said.

Oguchi denied speculation that Sega is in talks with Microsoft on a capital alliance but said "making a special or closer relationship" with a game console maker would be an option when the console makers launch their next-generation systems.

"We'll maintain our multi-platform policy, but we may make an arrangement with a console maker, such as providing our sports games only for a certain hardware," he said.

KEEPING PROMISES

Analysts say Oguchi, who joined Sega straight from university in 1984, would be able to re-engineer the firm's development strategy, but he may face difficulties in boosting its weak balance sheet.

"My task for the first year is to achieve our financial target," Oguchi said.

Sega, which revised its earnings estimate three times in the past business year, has a reputation for breaking promises.

Last week, the company said it aimed to break even in its consumer software operations this year and was targeting 34 percent growth in group operating profit.

"Our estimate is rather conservative if we consider extra contributions from PC games and other things," Oguchi said, adding that he is confident of keeping promises this time.

Oguchi also said he had started mapping out the restructuring of the current development team and that a new structure would be put in place as early as July.

Sega's shares have fallen 44 percent so far this year, underperforming the broad TOPIX index which has lost three percent.

Sega's share price ended Tuesday trading down 0.75 percent at 660 yen, compared with a drop of 1.3 percent in the Nikkei average.

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How is this going to make sense....both EA and SEGA are fiercely competing each other in sports arena!! It would be like Sony and MS joining hands!! Better option would be to join hands with Sony/MS or N!!
 
It doesn't make sense, but some of the behind the scenes stuff does. It's mostly just talk from what I can tell, and that's all SEGA's been doing for the past 6 months, nothing but talking with other companies to form an alliance or merge. Then SEGA internally says that it wants to go it alone and see what happens this fiscal year. It's all getting really redundant and if something ever comes of the talks I'd be a bit surprised.
 
Why cant some electronic giant like Matsushita or Samsung or LG buy SEGA and gain a foothold in console maket.... :?: may be we will see SEGA consoles in future.. :idea:
 
Matshushita? I wouldn't trust them to pull it off. A while back, they bought 3D0's M2 technology for a $100 mil and then proceeded to just sit on it. Who buys something for a $100 mil and then does nothing with it, is utterly beyond me...but sure enough, Matsushita did it.
 
Matshushita bought M2 tech at the end of 1995 for $100 million. Sega was concidering using this as either a Saturn upgrade (Eclipse?) or as their next console, or Sega would develop software for M2 standalone console from Matshushita but all those proposals were rejected in favor of better technology (PowerVR2) for Sega's own console.


Samsung ended up with 3D0 Systems (but not M2) re-organized them into what was called CagEnt where M2's sucessor, MX, continued development. then CagEnt almost got bought by Nintendo for an MX-based console in late 1997 after the scrapped SGI N2000 project but before Project Dolphin with IBM & ArtX... finally MX tech and CagEnt was sold to Microsoft in 1998, who brought them into the Webtv division where they still are today, AFAIK.
 
ATI (who has ArtX and part of Real3D) plus Matshushita plus NEC and one or all of the following: Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, working with NEC on their own Cell-crushing CPU, with Nintendo & Sega software = sweet
:D :D :D :D


speculation, but who knows.
 
I place my bets on Nintendo + Sega.
I just have this feeling. I'd see it as the best working relationship for both of them.
 
rabidrabbit said:
I place my bets on Nintendo + Sega.
I just have this feeling. I'd see it as the best working relationship for both of them.

Agreed. Also keep in mind Sega's most successful post-Dreamcast games are on the Gamecube.
 
Whatever, as long as they don't end up with EA, I'm fine with it! ;)
Oh another matter, does anybody in this industry still take SEGA seriously after all this "we'll fusion with theses guys ... no wait, we prefer those over there ... nah, we'll do it on our own ... oops, this offer looks interesting ... " nonsense?
 
Gollum said:
Whatever, as long as they don't end up with EA, I'm fine with it! ;)
Oh another matter, does anybody in this industry still take SEGA seriously after all this "we'll fusion with theses guys ... no wait, we prefer those over there ... nah, we'll do it on our own ... oops, this offer looks interesting ... " nonsense?

Um... why is everyone just assuming this has to do with some kind of merger?

All it's saying is that they're considering a publishing alliance - same thing Squaresoft used to do over here (what do you think Square Electronic Arts LLC meant?).
 
Tagrineth said:
Um... why is everyone just assuming this has to do with some kind of merger?

All it's saying is that they're considering a publishing alliance - same thing Squaresoft used to do over here (what do you think Square Electronic Arts LLC meant?).

Agreed, but I think the fact that the companies in question are EA and Sega have caught people off-guard. It opens the question, why is EA willing to do this when they've killed Sega and will be competing against themselves? I think everyone will question at some point if this is the first step in a more long-term closing of relations and eventual assimilation.
 
Tagrineth said:
Um... why is everyone just assuming this has to do with some kind of merger?

All it's saying is that they're considering a publishing alliance - same thing Squaresoft used to do over here (what do you think Square Electronic Arts LLC meant?).
I didn't say this was about a merger, I was refering to the whole Sammy, no-Sammy, MS, no-MS, EA, no-EA, Namco, no-Namco, etc. etc. fiasco of the past months and wether it hurt SEGA's credibity..

As for my comment on EA, I just happen to think any form of cooperation with EA can only end bad for SEGA. Granted several of their titles could have done better and for their regular games a publishing alliance might do some good. What hurt them the most though was the complete commercial failure of their sports titles. In light of that the whole thing doesn't make any sense, EA is their biggest competitor in that genre! So one has to wonder just how far this alliance would have to go to really make any sense for both sides...
 
I didn't say this was about a merger, I was refering to the whole Sammy, no-Sammy, MS, no-MS, EA, no-EA, Namco, no-Namco, etc. etc. fiasco of the past months and wether it hurt SEGA's credibity..

I don't think so... It's been pretty obvious that anybody who's entered into negotiations have pretty much just wanted their software houses (and probably not all of them either), and SEGA's been wanting them to take the whole thing (e.g. Arcades and Amusement divisions). Nobody seems to really want all that baggage (not that I can blame them). I must say that I'm rather surprised the Namco deal fell apart (if there was any serious effort to begin with) considering after all those years of rivalry they'd become so close in the past few years and share very similar business interests (Of coure maybe Namco doesn't want anymore arcade and amusement assets as they've had a hard enough time managing what they have).
 
Oh another matter, does anybody in this industry still take SEGA seriously after all this "we'll fusion with theses guys ... no wait, we prefer those over there ... nah, we'll do it on our own ... oops, this offer looks interesting ... " nonsense?

One picture is worth a thousand words..



sas.jpg



:devilish:
 
archie4oz said:
So like what? Are you saying that Sega and Sammy are destined for each other? ;)

Now Namco and Sammy were out, which left MS (which is a pretender, as seen in the movie) and EA (E. Ass, which is a jerk who is crazy on shoes).

May be SEGA want a pizza from the pretender or some kind of shit from the Ass. :D

edit: changed exxxxxxxxxx to e. to be less vulnerable :LOL:
 
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