It’s the end of an era. According to The Tojo Dojo, and subsequently reported by Eurogamer, Sega has completely exited the video game arcade business after being one of the companies to champion the market for more than 50 years. To be clear, this doesn’t meant that every single arcade stop in Japan will no longer function. It just means that all of them will have new branding, in this case with the company that Sega sold their arcade stock to, Genda.
Sega has apparently sold all of its remaining assets in the arcade operations to Genda Inc. Genda is an amusement rental business that has been working on maintaining Sega’s arcade machines all over Japan, and is also the same company that Sega sold 85.1% of its original shares in the same market back in 2020. Genda will now claim the remaining 14.9% and completely take over all Sega arcade locations. They will eventually be rebranded as GiGO, which is an acronym for “Get into the Gaming Oasis.”
The decision does not come as a surprise to many as Sega has long been in transition to focus more on the home console market, as well as the PC market. It also didn’t help when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit and caused worldwide ramifications that halted and slowed down any sort of development for any IPs. This includes the arcade market, which suffered through its worst setback as nobody was going to the arcades at the beginning of the pandemic.
To Sega, it’s the end of a 50 plus year endeavor that they were more than synonymous with, especially in their native Japan. However, this also allows Sega to fully focus on the aforementioned console/PC market, which Sega has seen massive growth in the past few years. This point is emphasized by the fact that they have just opened a brand new studio in Sapporo City which will be working on new software as well as assisting with existing ones.