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Nintendo Buying Sega? Or Not?
jeffsenter writes "According to this NYTimes article (free reg. req.) Nintendo is actually in talks to buy Sega for about $2B. As you know Sega has been losing money for years and is beaten by the competition from Sony. Rumors of the end of Sega are nothing new. Sega is making money from its arcade business so maybe they will sell to Nintendo and focus on software."
But according to a CNNfn story, it isn't happening
From www.thegia.com:
Shenmue 2 drops from sight [10.05.00] With troubles plaguing developer AM2 and Sega's webpage mum, the future of Yu Suzuki's second gift looks grim.
When development of Sega's epic Shenmue proved to be too ambitious in scope, producer Yu Suzuki decided to split the project up into multiple chapters: Chapter 1 would come first as Shenmue, Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 would follow as Shenmue 2, and the remaining 15 would be developed and released at a later date. But following lackluster Japanese success of the first installment and new happenings within Sega, the future of Shenmue 2 is now in doubt.
For starters, head Shenmue director Keiji Okayasu quit AM2 last month, quickly following the departure of a close colleague. Sega has also failed to make any mention of the game on the release date section of its Japanese webpage, even within the "release date undecided" category. Additionally, all mentions of "Chapter 1" in the Japanese version have been nixed in the U.S., and the game was nowhere to be found at Sega's glitzy CyberClub gathering held earlier in Japan.
When asked to comment, gamers.com reports Shenmue developer AM2 asserted that the game is still in production and "will definitely be released... We will make a formal announcement once we decide the release date." While heartening, even firmer assurance was given in July to fans worried about the future of Mother 3/Earthbound 64. A month later, the game was cancelled.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Some comments don't quite make sense:
Despite Dreamcast's advanced technology and record-setting introduction in September 1999 -- it sold 500,000 units in that month alone -- Sony's PlayStation 2 this year broke that record and all but obliterated Dreamcast's lead.
Eh? Sony sold 500,000 PS2s in one day, but haven't sold very many since then. In fact, there has been at least one article I read on how Dreamcast sales have increases dramatically due to PS2 shortages. Following Thanksgiving weekend, Dreamcast sales were up 82%, putting it in second place in the market share game, right behind PlayStation 1. Now all this may change when PS2 production starts to meet demand, but that's no excuse for misleading the public.
PC Data's market share numbers for the week ending Nov 25:
As of Nov. 18, Sega's share of the North American market for game consoles had fallen to 17.5 percent
A fine date to choose. Right before Thanksgiving weekend, when sales just exploded. This article was published today, why are they using data that is 40 days old?
It is not clear how much the companies make selling hardware
They usually take a loss. That's pretty common knowledge, I thought.
Overall, Dreamcast is doing very well right now, at least in the US. So it's hard to see how a Nintendo acquisition would make sense. So either there is some sort of weird bias on the part of the authors (which seems unlikely), or they do not realize that they are drastically misrepresenting the situation. I'm no Dreamcast loyalist or anything like that (these things only cost $150, most people can afford one), but I hate to see people get away with causing confusion via inaccurate journalism.
And why would Nintendo want Sega right now? They are already developing Game Cube, and have a very successful business thanks to Pokemon, GameBoy and the occasional epic title like Zelda. It would be a shame if Dreamcast got buried in purely political issues, since it's home to so many fascinatingly original game design ideas (Crazy Taxi, Seaman, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, etc).
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Miyamoto is in the "Special Thanks" section for Seaman. Apparently he and the Sega designer talked over the game before it was put into production, giving ideas.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I think your starting to see rumors like this mainly because Nintendo is nervous about the competition from Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo has been able to get by on the strengths of their titles/characters since the NES/SNES glory days. But Sony and Microsoft have developers lined up around the block (or in Microsofts case, stuffed in their wallet) to develop games for their consoles.
Nintendo needs some meat to their lineup. The N64 sold well, and there were some great games for it, but some new blood is definitely needed. The problem with consoles is that you have a limited time window that you have to get your games into: if you run too late, the cosole is history. Pokemon is probably due to flame out soon. The Zelda line has 2 great N64 games, but there's only so many of those you can put out in a systems lifetime (seems to be about 2). Mario and Donkey Kong will of course have a plethora of "scrollers", racing games, party games, etc...which will make up the core of the title line-up. Rare with the GoldenEye/Perfect Dark types games is a heavy-hitter; but again, there's only so many games they can put out.
Think back to the glory days of NES/SNES. Sure, we all got and played the Marios and the Zeldas, but look at all the other great games from 3rd party developers that kept you playing the deck. Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Tecmo Super Bowl, Street Fighter series, EA sports titles. Slowly but surely, these developers, who were once Nintendo exclusive, have migrated to other consoles. Some still develop for the N64, some don't.
Maybe the hardware mistakes made by the N64 had the most to do with it's "lack of previous success" (you can't really call it a failure). It looks like the Cube is going to have some kick-ass specs, which would cure that problem. Still, Nintendo has lost some big third party developers (EA and Square topping the list), and a purchase of Sega would help them gain back some much needed titles. It will be interesting to see where this goes.