Make-A-Wish grants J-Jay’s Sonic the Hedgehog wish

The Make-A-Wish Foundation started with the goal of fulfilling wishes of kids that are in life threatening medical conditions. Here we have J-Jay, a kid from the Netherlands who’s a huge Sonic fan. What did he want? Eat a slice of birthday cake with the blue blur himself.

So the foundation contacted SEGA Benelux office, and got someone from SEGA Europe over to Holland to start planning a boy’s dream party. To read the rest of J-Jays story and view more photographs from the event, click here.

Glad that everything worked out for J-Jay and his family. Looked like an awesome party.

SEGA hires Sissel Henno to head licensing department

SEGA Europe is going to step up their licensing game, meaning you should expect more merchandise related to popular SEGA franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog in the near future. SEGA has hired Sissel Henno to head the licensing team.

“I’m very excited to become a part of the SEGA team and to grow the licensing activities around these fantastic brands. The celebration of Sonic’s 20th Anniversary this year is a great way to kick start my new assignment and I’m looking forward to working with the existing licensees as well as any new partners that we can welcome to the licensing program.” – Sissel Henno.

Sounds like we will be having a lot of junk to buy that is Sonic related for 2011. Feels good man.

[Source: MCV]

2011 – An industry’s hopes


MVCUK have quizzed a number of top industry people based in the UK regarding what they are most looking forward too in 2011, on that list is everyone’s favourite western Sega CEO in god knows how long Mike Hayes and Sports Interactive head honcho Miles Jacobson. Let’s see what they are looking forward to in 2011.

Miles Jacobson – Studio Director, Sports Interactive
“Having been lucky to try out a beta version, I’m most looking forward to the new Virtua Tennis release, with a Move and a 3D TV. I’m really looking forward to March’s Nordoff Robbins Football Extravaganza dinner which is sponsored by Tesco – it’s always a great night and raised over £350k last year.

Mike Hayes – CEO, Sega Europe and Sega America
“I want 2011 to be a great year for a little blue hedgehog – as Sonic is 20 years old in June.”

If Miles is looking forward to Virtua Tennis 4, which is being developed in-house at Sega Japan for the first time since PowerSmash 3 (Arcade) then I think that’s a good sign!

As for Mike Hayes; well shit man, so do we… So do we!

You can read the others HERE.

Sega attending ‘GAMEfest’

Videogame retail store ‘GAME’ are holding an event in Madrid this year, known as GAMEfest with hopes that one day it will be as big as Tokyo Game Show, E3 and GamesCom. (Good luck!)

Sega Europe will be attending bringing their upcoming releases to the event. Although no list of games has been announced I’ll bet Vanquish, Sonic Colours and Sonic 4 will be there amongst others. *Crosses fingers for a new Shogun 2 Total War demonstrations!*

If you’re interested in attending, the event is being held from October 8th to the 10th in the exhibition site Recinto Ferial Juan Carlos I de Madrid. Doors will be open from 10am to 8pm and tickets can be bought at GAME.es for 3,00€ each, but unfortunately only Friday and Sunday tickets are still available. Saturday appears to be sold out.

So if anyone is interested in going, Sega will be at booth 17! Here is the official site with info. (In spanish.)

[Thanks to Sonic Stadium]

Alan Pritchard now U.S. VP of sales and marketing


Do you reqonize the name? Alan Pritchard is moving to the U.S., from his old job in SEGA London. In London, he was managing director, now he will be VP of sales and marketing for SEGA of America.

“All of our central brand marketing initiatives will be done with Sega West in mind, rather than having our team in America going in one direction and our team in Europe going in another,” –Alan Pritchard (VP of Sales and Marketing)

So, what about the rest of the job shuffle? Hit the jump to see those.