Sega Announces New Chinese Licensing Deal

Officials from Sega Corporation have today announced that the company has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with AtGames Holdings, which grants the distributor rights to distribute Sega software in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The deal covers standard packaged software, OEM products and software downloads. It also includes the rights to sell Sega software products for proprietary platforms (including the Master System, Game Gear, Genesis/Mega Drive, Saturn, 32X, Sega CD and Dreamcast) bundled together with an emulator to original equipment manufacturers, chip makers and other product manufacturers in Greater China. These manufacturers will then be able to incorporate these bundles into products for sale throughout the world. "We are excited about this opportunity to establish Sega's brand in the highly competitive market of Greater China and look forward to being able to reach a whole new audience through the efforts of AtGames," said Hisao Oguchi, President and COO of Sega. The wide-ranging nature of the new deal certainly hints at how important Sega now considers the Chinese market to be. This is a level of interest shared by Nintendo and Sony, although the OEM deal suggests that Sega favors Nintendo’s approach of creating unique hardware for the territory that is more difficult to pirate, albeit by proxy.