I am seething in anger.
SEETHING I SAY!
Seriously though, I am surprised how often people want to forget how much of a strong hand SEGA has in the PC market and the investment they have put into it.
- Sports Interactive continues to grow, the latest version of Football Manager being the best selling in the series too.
- When SEGA purchased the Creative Assembly, they were one team. Now they house four development teams (Total War, Alien, Warhammer and mobile games studio)
- Spiral Knight's Three Rings developer acquired last year and that title continues to do well (Although not one of the raging success stories as the former two, I'd admit)
- Finally we come across Relic which is a fantastic investment.
Now you couple this with their ever increasing stake in mobile gaming (Sonic Jump over 8 million downloads, Football Manager 2013 sold over 500,000 units, Dragon Coins did over 500,000 downloads, Kingdom Conquest over 3 million etc) SEGA has a strong foot in both markets which are growing faster than the console space (Sad to admit this when it comes to the mobile market... But still think that has it's own massive dangers) I just do not see the likelihood of Sammy selling SEGA. The whole point the merger with SEGA occurred was due to a need from Sammy's side to diversify their business. If Pachinko's stop selling, what are they going to rely on?
And look, people often overlook this, but Hajime Satomi's (SEGA Sammy's majority shareholder and founder of Sammy) son was Vice President of SEGA America's Digital Business arm and soon SEGA solidified their presence in the digital space. Now Haruki Satomi is president of SEGA Networks which houses 211 employees (Notable ones being Ueda and Kikuchi, though I can see Ueda splintering off much like a few of Sonic Team's people move in and out of the Ryu Ga Gotoku team) why shift the heir to the throne in a business you are planning to sell off? A note to be made, Satomi Jr has been associated with SEGA since 2005 to current.
And you are quite right to point out to people SEGA's arcade games, titles like Border Break and Shining Force Cross are easily identified by AM2, but what about Sangoku Taisen? Hatune Miku? SEGA's Euro Championship Football game? Their baseball title? There are just so many to list that do not have a developer (And hard to find out unless we get English credits) then we get into the confusing grey area when their arcade teams develop console titles (Virtua Tennis 4 and Project Marai) then we have their animation studio like Marza which should be finishing Harlock later this year.
PS. I never pay much attention to the stock prices, but SEGA Sammy has just hit a 5 year high. But BUT THEY IZ DOOMZZZZZZ etc etc
