Japan-based developer and publisher Sega Sammy is restructuring its business operations by splitting its video games division and its pachinko division into two separate businesses. The move may reignite rumors that Sega will be selling its video game sector to Microsoft, although it's also likely that the company is simply cleaning house and refocusing its resources.
While Sega may be known far and wide primarily as a video gaming company, it actually started life working with coin operated entertainment machines, including slot machines, as far back as the sixties (Sega is a portmanteau of Service Games). The company moved into video game production in the 1970s, where it benefitted tremendously from the video game boom of the seventies and eighties. In 2004, SEGA merged with Sammy Corporation, a company that specialized in pachinko and pachislot machines, and became the holding company SEGA Sammy. While Sammy dabbled in video games after the merger, it ultimately continued to produce gambling machines, while the Sega stuck with video games and gaming hardware. Both have operated since under the same corporate office, despite their different focuses.
But a recent official statement from Sega Sammy reveals that the company will be restructuring in April, with a corporate split into Sammy and Sega Group Corporation (or SHQ), with the latter merging with existing subsidiary Sega Corporation. Sammy, naturally, will continue to focus on pachinko, pachislot, and other gambling machines as an independent and fully formed subsidiary of Sega Sammy, while SHQ will continue to develop video games and hardware as a separate subsidiary. The change goes into effect on April 1, and will ostensibly streamline SEGA Sammy's bureaucratic oversight of both new companies.
The news may herald what fans have been speculating for some time, ever since Microsoft started its infamous spending spree and snatching up video game developers and studios as fast as their budget would allow: that Sega was next on Microsoft's shopping list. As an independent subsidiary, SHQ can be sold to other, larger companies while Sega Sammy retains its independence and likely still have some creative control over its most popular franchises, should the need ever arise.
Of course, it's also entirely likely that Sega Sammy is just streamlining its business operations into one that's more efficient. That's certainly the reasoning it's giving in the official statement, and it would make sense given that Sega asked 650 of its employees to retire back in November, in order to reduce operational costs, that changes were needed. So for now, speculation continues to be the order of the day, and as long as Sega continues to exist, who can really complain?
Source: Sega Sammy
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