Former type Division (Defunct) Headquarters Japan Founded 2000 | Industry Video games industry Owner Sega | |
Fate Merged with Sega's Research and Development Defunct 2004; 13 years ago (2004) Founders Rikiya Nakagawa, Noriyoshi Ohba Video games The House of the Dead, The House of the Dead III, Nightshade, The House of the Dead 2, Skies of Arcadia | ||
Sega Wow was a division of Japanese video game developer Sega.
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History
In 2000 all of Sega's in-house Consumer Software (CS) and Amusement Machine (AM) R&D departments were separated from the main company and established on 9 semi-autonomous subsidiaries, with each subsidiary getting an elected president as a studio head. However, for more financial stability, Sega began consolidating its studios into six main ones (Sega Wow, Sega AM2, Hitmaker, Amusement Vision, Smilebit, Sonic Team) and merged them back into a uniform R&D structure in 2004.
WOW Entertainment was headed by Rikiya Nakagawa and Kazunari Tsukamoto. In addition to an continued arcade line-up, WOW Entertainment made efforts on the consumer market with the SEGA GT racing series, an effort to compete against Sony's Gran Turismo. They also made efforts on the Game Boy Advance.
Overworks was formed from CS2, and headed by Noriyoshi Ohba. Out of the gate it came out with Skies of Arcadia for Dreamcast and GameCube, and also continued the Sakura Taisen series. In 2002, it came with the Shinobi reboot on PlayStation 2.
In 2003 it was renamed to SEGA WOW and absorbed Overworks. The line-up of action games Blood Will Tell, Nightshade and the RPG Sakura Taisen became part of SEGA WOW. By 2004, Sega Wow had 215 employees which were split across consumer and arcade development after the integration back into Sega.