Sega And Microsoft Announce New Partnership

Most notably, the next game in the Shenmue series will only appear on the Xbox in North America, and Sega will also port Phantasy Star Online to the Xbox as well. New online PC games may also result from collaborations between the companies. Sega and Microsoft also said their work together would extend into the arcade market. Both companies said they will begin designing an arcade motherboard based on the Xbox technology for arcade game machines. However, in an interview with Reuters, Masanao Maeda, Sega's senior officer said that the new partnership with Microsoft will not raise it to the top of Sega's priority list: "...this [new partnership with Microsoft] doesn't mean that we will put special focus on Xbox. PlayStation 2 will remain our main platform because it is likely to be the best-selling machine for a while."