I just went to Nintendojo.com, where I read an interesting news article about a possible merger between Namco and Sega... The article is posted below:
Reports have been filtering through that Namco Corp.(renowned for franchises like Soul Calibur and PacMan) has approached Sega with a comprehensive merger proposal. Transpired below is the official words from our sources below.
Looking to the future, Namco allegedly believes that joining forces with Sega would allow it to remain competitive in the videogame industry, according to the publication. Both Namco and Sega have a strong focus on home and arcade videogame development as well as amusement facility businesses. Additionally, intellectual assets would be combined between the two companies, meaning that such a deal could very well result in seeing our favorite Sega characters as guest stars in a future Soul Calibur title.
In its proposal, Namco reportedly has calculated estimated sales of nearly three billion dollars when combined with Sega, which would boost it to the number one position in Japan over Konami's current billion sales total. According to Nikkei, the proposal also states that Sega would remain as the surviving entity, thus the Namco label would most likely disappear under the Sega brand. The entire deal could, if approved, be carried out as soon as 2004.
Today's news, though unconfirmed, could mark the second entity interested in merging with Sega, the first being Sammy Corp. of Japan in an announcement made last February. A possible third company has also recently expressed interest in joining forces with Sega, but in a more limited scope. U.S.-based publisher Electronic Arts is reportedly interested in taking a stake in Sega's software development operations and playing a financial role on the marketing side of things.
In response to this latest Namco proposal, Sega has called a board meeting for next Wednesday to discuss its options in merging with either Sammy or Namco, or in partnering with Electronic Arts in some capacity. A decision is said to be coming as early as the end of this month.
Certainly, times are changing when you see Japanese companies like Square and Enix, and now Namco and Sega, partnering up so as to not be pushed out of the software race by larger companies like Electronic Arts. Wheteher or not this will provide Nintendo with more or less support, in the long run, remains to be seen. Stay tuned.
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If this is true, then that would be one of the biggest mergers since Square merged with Enix! It would be really interesting to see different mascots from Namco and Sega games together (Sega's Shinobi starring in Namco's Soul Calibur fighting games, for instance...or Sonic and Pac-Man in a platformer).