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Sega Corporation

Sega Corporation – World’s Most Prolific Arcade Game Developers.

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Sega Corporation is a Japanese-Based Multinational Video Game and entertainment firm. It is headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo, and was founded in 1960. It has its other subdivisions overseas. One is established in Irvin, California, known as Sega of America. The other is Sega Europe, located in London. It is a subsidiary of Sega Group Corporation (Sega Sammy Holdings) which develops video game consoles. It has a division called Saga Games which develops arcade and home video games. They were different entities that merged in 2020. It has achieved a revenue of 247.7 billion Japanese Yen in 2020. They have about 3,000 employees working in the firm. Key people who contributed a lot to the corporation are Haruki Satomi (Chairman and CEO), Yukio Sugino (President and COO), Shigeru Yamashita (vice-chairman), Ian Curran (President, Sega of America), and Gary Dale (President, Sega Europe).

History

Sega Corporation was founded on 3 June 1960 by American Businessmen Martin Bromley and Richard Stewart as Nihon Goraku after it acquired the fortune of its predecessor, Service Games of Japan. After five years, its name was changed to Sega Enterprises, after the acquisition of a coin-operated game importer, Rosen Enterprises. The firm created its first-ever coin-operated game in 1966 which was called Periscope. But In 1969, it was sold to Gulf and Western Industries. In the early 1980s, it experienced a downturn and initiated the development of video game consoles such as SG-1000 and Master System, but there was great competition with companies like Nintendo Entertainment System in the market.

Sega Corporation
Image source: www.spieltimes.com

Subsidiaries

It has various subsidiaries.

  • Amplitude Studios
  • Atlus
  • Creative Assembly
  • Hardlight
  • Ignited Artists
  • Play Heart
  • Relic Entertainment
  • Sports Interactive
  • Two Point Studios
  • TMS Entertainment

Renowned Products

The firm has developed numerous multi-million-selling game franchises, which include Total War, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Yakuza Sonic. It has developed several long-running series such as Virtua Fighter and Initial D Arcade Stage. It is mainly renowned for its game consoles, creative approach, and innovative thinking.

Acquisition

In 2001, the firm stopped the production of game consoles and decided to become a third-party developer and publisher. In 2004, it was acquired by Sammy Corporation. After that, its profit started increasing and its name was changed to Sega Games Co., Ltd. The different domains like entertainment, arcade, and toy were divided into various companies which merged in 2020 as Saga Corporation.

Achievements

Sega Corporation is known as the world’s most abundant arcade game developer. It has more than 70 franchises, 500 + games, and 20 arcade system boards since 1981 and was recognized by Guinness World Records for the same. The Sega Genesis is one of the best consoles.

Founders – Martin Bromley, Richard Stewart

Martin Jerome Bromberg also known as Martin Jerome Bromley was born on 8 August 1919 and died on 7 September 2008 at the age of 89. He was a great entrepreneur and was one of the primary founders of Service games, a predecessor of Sega before its merger with Rosen Enterprises in 1965. He worked in coin-operated amusements with his father at Standard Games and also participated in World War II with his duty at a shipyard.

Richard Stewart was born on 5 January 1995 in Texas, United States, and died at the age of 74. He served as a key executive member of Sega and was a great American businessman.

CEO – Haruki Satomi

Haruki Satomi is the Chief Executive Officer of Sega Corporation born on 11 January 1979 in Tokyo, Japan. He has been a key executive member of Sega Sammy Holdings, Sega Networks, and Sega of Japan. He is a Japanese Businessman and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts.

Nexon

Nexon – Kim Jung-ju Founded The Company While Pursuing A Doctorate At KAIST.

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Pioneering in the world of digital entertainment, Nexon is a world-famous video game publisher. The company has brought several innovations into the gaming industry since 1994. For example, it was Nexon that first introduced a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in the world. The founders of the company are Kim Jung-ju and Jake Song and the current CEO of Nexon is Owen Mahoney. Though Nexon is famous all over the world as a Japanese enterprise, it was originally a South Korean venture in the gaming industry. At present, the headquarters of the company is based in Tokyo, Japan. Nexon has a very large market and it is the fourth largest online gaming company in Asia. The company offers video games for both PC and mobile users. 

Foundation & Initial Expansion 

In 1994, the two founders, Jung-ju and Song founded Nexon in Seoul, South Korea. Two years later, in 1996, the company published its first video game, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, which still today is available in the market. Many other titles followed this including QuizQuiz, Elance, Shattered Galaxy, and many more. After a few years, the company went into a mutual agreement with Solid Networks in 2000 and started its online gaming service in Japan. After a couple of years, the alliance with Solid Networks was dissolved and Nexon Japan Co., Ltd was formed as a subsidiary of the parent company. Though the company initially opened offices in South Korea and Japan, the games were available in several locations including Taiwan, China, Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Europe, Singapore, and North America. 

As the Japanese market of Nexon was expanding very rapidly the company decided to move its location to Tokyo. So, in 2005 the company relocated its headquarters, but South Korea’s market was also operational. In the same year, the company also entered the American market and established NX Games Inc. In 2008, Nexon made a big acquisition when it acquired Neople Inc. Through this wholly-owned subsidiary, the company became the developer of Dungeon & Fighter which is one of the most popular video games in China. In 2009, the company changed its name from Nexon Corporation to Nexon. 

Nexon
Image source: mk.co.kr

Present Days

In 2010, the South Korean business of the company acquired two companies in a row. They are Ndoors Corporation and GameHi Co., Ltd. The Korean business changed its name from Nexon Corporation to Nexon Korea Corporation in 2011. Eventually, the company decided to go public and filed its IPO by the end of 2011. The IPO was the largest in Japan in that year and also the second-largest for a technology company that year worldwide. A few years later, Owen Mahoney became the CEO and President of the company. 

Under the new leadership, the company eventually expanded to Taiwan in 2015. In 2016, the company acquired Big Huge Games in the United States followed by i Digital Connect Co., which eventually became Nexon Thailand Co., Ltd. Two more companies that have been acquired in recent years are Pixelberry Studios and Embark Studios AB. In 2020, Nexon showed interest to invest an amount of $1.5 billion in listed entertainment companies. But the company also announced that it doesn’t have any interest in acquiring the companies that it is investing in. Recently, AGBO, a film production company has sold a $400 million minority stake to Nexon which is currently valued at $1.1 billion. 

The Man Behind The Success

Kim Jung-ju is a South Korean businessman and an investor. He co-founded the company, Nexon while pursuing a doctorate at KAIST. Nexon is currently the largest gaming company in South Korea and under Kim’s leadership, the company released many innovative developments that the world has witnessed for the first time. Unfortunately, Kim passed away at the age of fifty-four and before his death, he was receiving treatment for severe depression. When he died, he was the third-wealthiest person in South Korea. 

roblox

David Baszucki : Founder of Roblox, the Biggest Video Game Building Platform

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Video games are the best way to pass time and also good for some brain exercises. But it takes a lot of efforts to create a video game as it is quite a complex task. But what if there be a platform that helps the keen developers to create those video games in some simpler steps? It would be great, Right? Roblox is such a platform that allows its users to design their games, and even play games created by other developers. The platform not only is helping people create their own games, but also establish themselves as tech entrepreneurs. Roblox was founded by American internet entrepreneur David Baszucki in 2006.

Early Life

Baszucki was born on 20 January 1963 in Canada. He completed his high school education from Eden Prairie High School in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He was an active participant in the extracurriculars of his school and was the head of the quiz team of the school. Later, he joined Stanford University, where he studied engineering and computer science. He then graduated as the General Motors Scholar in electrical engineering in 1985.

Career

Baszucki was always into starting up his own business, so only after four years from his graduation, along with his brother, he founded ‘Knowledge Revolution’ in 1989. Knowledge Revolution produced educational applications for Macintosh users. The first product of the Knowledge Revolution was Interactive Physics, an application that helped users learn Physics. The platform simulated a 2D environment where the users could carry out Physics experiments.

Roblox founder David Baszucki
Image Source: bizjournals.com

The next year, the company released ‘Working Model’, another application that helped users learn mechanical physics. After building various educational applications, MSC Software, a California based company acquired Knowledge Revolution in 1998.

After the acquisition, Baszucki joined MSC Software as Vice President and the General Manager in 2000. After working for two years in the company, he left the job to start an investment firm named Baszucki & Associates. He even hosted a radio show named KSCO Radio Santa Cruz from February to July 2003.

Founding Roblox

Baszucki was inspired by the success of the Knowledge Revolution, and how popular Interactive Physics had become among the young kids. This led him to start working on a new project in 2004 that would also involve its users in the development work. Baszucki started working on a new project and founded DynaBlocks with Erik Cassel.

Later in 2005, the company was rebranded as Roblox. The official launch of the company and its website took place in 2006. The company produced a creation engine named Roblox Studio that allowed people to create their games and experiences on the platform. The users could also play games created by other developers on the platform. In 2007, the company released a premium membership, i.e. Builders Club, that offered extra features to the subscribers.

The platform became a place to learn and create codes for the teenagers, and it received maximum engagement form the children under the age of 13. In 2009, the company raised a $2.2 million in crowdfunding, and it raised a $4 million in the second round of funding in 2011. In the same year, the company hosted Hack Week, an event for the developers where these developers could present some out-of-the-box ideas.

The company has launched its own virtual currency named Robux, that players use to buy games on the platform.

In December 2012, Roblox released an iOS version of the platform, and in the next year, the company developed a currency exchanging platform, Developer Exchange system, using which the developers could exchange their Robux virtual currency with real-time currency.

In 2015, Roblox then released a new and revamped feature for the game development, ‘Smooth Terrain’, that offered, even smoother game development. The next year, the company also introduced Roblox VR for Oculus Rift that could be used for playing over ten million 3D games available on the platform. Roblox also released a Windows 10 compatible version of Roblox in the same year.

The company even raised a huge sum of $92 million in another funding round led by Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures in March 2017.

In 2017, there was a total of 2 million Roblox developers on the platform, and it had over 56 million monthly active players. The collective earning of this year was calculated to be $30 million. The platform has helped many teenagers to make some money for their expenses, many of which have also paid for their college fee with the same money. Developers are even making $50,000 a month through Roblox.

Roblox is one of America’s fastest-growing companies, and it also received the same title from Inc. 5000 in 2016 and 2017. It was also awarded the ‘Economic Development Association (SAMCEDA) Award of Excellence’ in 2017.

Baszucki also received various awards and accolades for his invention, including the ‘San Mateo Visionary Hero Award’ for Roblox’s contributions to education and encouraging kids to code (2015). He was also named as one of ‘100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs’ by Goldman Sachs (2017-18). He has over 15 patents in his name.

Ethan Nicholas

Ethan Nicholas : From A Software Engineer to an Overnight Successful Game Developer

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In the programming world, which is already brimming with the tech experts and finest coders, only a few have achieved overnight success. Experience plays a vital role in the journey of a long-term accomplishment, but who knows when one can turn out to be a millionaire while just planning to earn some extra cash. Ethan Nicholas, a senior software engineer currently working at Google, developed a game with the sole purpose of earning some extra cash. But iShoot, the game he developed, turned out to be the biggest achievement of his life and brought him profit he never dreamt of.

Early Life

Nicholas started programming from the tender age of 8 and became a professional coder at the age of 16. He went to North Carolina State University and graduated in 1998. In June 1998, he joined GeoCities as a software engineer, but he shifted to Yahoo! only after a year and worked there as a lead developer. In July 2006, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked as a primary developer on the Java Kernel Project. And, while working for this company the idea of developing a game strike his mind, and he started learning objective C. Nicholas had to learn objective C so that he could start developing the game.

Development of iShoot

Ethan Nicholas
Image Source: wired.com

While he was working as a staff engineer in Sun Microsystems, he spent eight hours every day to develop iShoot. Since he didn’t know objective C and also didn’t have enough cash to afford the documentation he needed to learn it; he mastered it from various internet sources within six weeks followed by writing the code. Programming from an early age of 8, he was able to ace a whole different language very quickly.

Ethan Nicholas, in one of his interviews, mentioned that he was inspired by Steve Demeter, developer of Trism, a game that brought him overnight glory and became a connoisseur in the world of game development. In 19th October 2008, Nicholas launched iShoot, an artillery combat game which was available in Apple’s iPhone app store. The launch of iShoot changed his life dramatically by earning $37,000 in a single day.

He was still working at Sun Microsystems and decided to leave his job to work on the next version of the game. In January 2009, Nicholas left his job and founded the gaming software company, Naughty Bits, under which he launched the second version of the game. By then, he totally made up his mind to devote all his time to iPhone software development.

The Success of iShoot

Though many game and application developers release their apps on the Apple Store, the success of Ethan Nicholas was quite appreciable and unpredictable. Initially, when the app was launched in October the number of users was less than expected and to attract more of them, Nicholas created both paid and free (iShoot Lite) versions of the game. This hiked the selling of the app, and the game became ranked number 1 on the App Store, within a few months of its release.

The game also acquired the top spot on the Top Paid Apps list, witnessing minimum 10,000 downloads per day. The free app was downloaded around 2.4 million times and over 300,000 users bought the paid app. Revenue of $21,000 was confirmed for 10,000 downloads per day, which were partially the driving force for creating the second version of it. By early 2009, Nicholas had already bagged $800,000, which is a more than a decent amount.

He was pretty surprised about the success, the 6-weeks hard work brought to him. So, for the next version, he was ready to blow the minds of the users with better graphics and game strategies exposing more of his programming skills.

Apart From Being a Game Developer

While Nicholas focused on expanding Naughty Bits, he was also involved with other business tycoons to expand his influence on other fields.

In January 2010, he cofounded echoBase and served as the lead server engineer for four years. He developed software that was useful to the medical professionals to track patient’s data. He served as a software engineer at Oracle for eight months.

At present, apart from working at Google, he is developing a swift compiler in Apportable.

Razer Collabs with Visa to Move Forward with its Fintech Arm

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Razer and Visa Partenership
Image Source: comentr.com

Razer the fintech gaming company has joined its hands with the world’s leader in digital payments, Visa, to initiate an unusual type of partnership. The two companies will be working together to develop a new virtual prepaid solution for many of Southeast Asia’s, especially the unbanked and underserved, consumers.

The company announced that its fintech arm, Razer Fintech, will be joining the fast-track program from Visa, as a revolutionary idea, aiming to transform the way the gamers make payments. The fast-track program from Visa has been specially designed for fintech companies to help them easily access 54 million merchant locations around the world that accept Visa.

The partnership between the two companies will lead to developing a new virtual payment service, that will empower the Razer Pay e-wallet and give its users access to the global Visa payment network. With this new service, the unbanked users will be able to top up the wallet, make online payment through it, and also, will be able to withdraw cash through it. The scope of Visa is already huge, and with the collab, the two companies will be targeting to the 60 million Razer users. Noticeably, the company has not talked about rolling out a physical payment card along with the service.

“We are pleased to partner with such a forward-looking and innovative company that understands the value and importance of expanding access to digital payments. This announcement reaffirms Visa’s commitment to the fast-growing and digitally savvy Southeast Asia region. Together, Visa and Razer Fintech have the opportunity to transform the payments experience for not only the gaming community but many of Southeast Asia’s unbanked and underserved consumers as well”, Chris Clark, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa, stated during the announcement.

The two companies have said that they will be rolling out a mini app for the new payment service and will also include great offers for its users. The app will be integrated into Razer’s virtual wallet app.

Tencent Replaces PUBG with a Less Popular But Patriotic Alternative for Chinese Players

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One of the top games in the world, PUBG, has been pulled out from its homeland China, following the new rules the China government introduced last month for the video games. Though it will no longer be available for the Chinese consumers, the company is providing them with less-popular, but a politically acceptable option, i.e. Heping Jingying or Elite Force for Peace.

pubg china
Image Source: mensxp.com

The company had to take the decision as the new rules from the government was restricting the company from securing the license for the game, that would allow it to collect the revenue from it. In fact, after a month-long freeze on approvals, the Chinese government restricted the title from making any money ever in the country. Until now, the company was running the game under testing, but finally, it has pulled out the plug for the game as it failed to monetize the game in the Chinese market.

Tencent brought the title Elite Force for Peace as soon as it circulated a message about it ending the testing period for PUBG on Wednesday. The title belongs to the same Hunger Games-style genre and resembles the widely-famous PUBG. The game is a tribute to the Chinese military and the Chinese Air Force. In fact, the company developed the game by taking advice from the recruitment department of the Chinese military.

The game has been developed by the similar Korea-based publishers as of PUBG, ie. Krafton (earlier known as BlueHole). Including the graphics of the game, there are a few other similarities to PUBG, except its missions targets on vanishing the terrorists in the game. Many of the players have also claimed that their achievements and the progress in PUBG has even transferred to the Peace game.

The game allows the players to add money to their accounts, enabling Tencent to monetise the game. PUBG had to suffer financially due to the Chinese license freeze last year, and this is the time for the company to buckle up to get back on the track. Force for Peace is a game which can be played by the players of age above 16 and is only available for the android users only.