Sega is withdrawing from the business with vending machines and its own arcades.

For 56 years, the company was one of the big players in this field and was represented in pretty much every “arcade” on the globe. The group will also no longer operate its own arcades in Japan in the future and has sold its shares to former competitor Genda. This was announced by Genda on Twitter. The arcades currently still running under the name Sega will soon be reflagged and will then belong to Gigo – the arcade division of Genda. According to various sources on the net, the main reason for the sale is the poor arcade business during the Corona pandemic. Due to numerous lockdowns and restrictions in Asia, the arcade business had slowed down a lot.

 

Sega was founded in 1940 by two US Americans and migrated to Japan in the early 1950s. At first, Sega introduced coin-operated gaming machines to US soldiers stationed in Japan. In the mid-60s, the company came out with the first electronic machine, which immediately became a huge success. In the early 70s, video game machines such as Frogger or Zaxxon followed. In 1988, the first video game console for the home was released. The Mega Drive and the Sonic game series were just the beginning of what would end some time later with the great Dreamcast.

In the meantime, Sega is active as a publisher and of course remains in the games market.