Sega Corporation (株式会社セガ, Kabushiki kaisha Sega, short for Service Games) is a Japanese video game development and publishing company. Created in the 1960s, it became known in the 1980s with its arcade cabinets and the Master System console, before making its mark with the Mega Drive and its blue hedgehog, Sonic. In the 1990s and 2000s, it distributed the Saturn and Dreamcast consoles, two cult machines with mixed commercial success.
The company has developed or published franchises that marked video game history: Sonic, Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter, Jet Set Radio or Shenmue, not to mention the Football Manager series published through its studio Sports Interactive. It is also behind Alien: Isolation, often cited as one of the best horror games inspired by cinema.
Creative Assembly and strategy
It is above all the acquisition of March 8, 2005 that interests strategy fans: the group buys Creative Assembly, the studio behind the Total War franchise. Since then, Sega has published historical entries like Total War: Rome II or Total War: Attila, as well as the Total War: Warhammer trilogy and spin-offs like Total War: Three Kingdoms. Sega also publishes the Company of Heroes series, developed by Relic Entertainment, another group studio.
In the 2020s, Sega continues its transformation with ambitious productions like Sonic Frontiers, Like a Dragon or Persona, carried by its subsidiary Atlus. The group has also acquired Rovio, the publisher of Angry Birds, to strengthen its mobile division, and is multiplying successful film adaptations with the Sonic franchise. This hybrid strategy — consoles, PC, mobile and cinema — makes Sega one of the rare Japanese players to have crossed every era of video games without disappearing.
Discover Sega games
- Total War: Warhammer
- Total War: Warhammer II
- Total War: Warhammer III
- Total War: Rome II
- Total War: Attila
- Company of Heroes 3
- All grand strategy games