Welcome to 2022, the year that will see the SEGA brand disappear from arcades and entertainment centers across Japan. As announced on January 28, GENDA SEGA Entertainment has changed its name to GENDA GiGO Entertainment. GENDA, which already owned 85.1% of the company after acquiring subsidiary Sega Entertainment in 2020, today completed the purchase of the remaining 14.9% stake. In fact, SEGA has therefore completely withdrawn from the management of arcades such as the famous Club SEGA as well as other establishments (SEGA World, SEGA Collaboration Cafe).
For the arcade landscape, this means that the historic SEGA brand will be gradually replaced by GENDA’s GiGO brand, which incidentally means “Get into the Gaming Oasis” and had already appeared in certain rooms, such as the establishment SEGA Ikebukuro GiGO which closed its doors last year. To be replaced in the process by a new room in which the traditional terminals had largely been erased in the face of the lint-catching machines. According to GENDA, the process of transforming the SEGA name into GiGO will begin in March 2022 but could take more than a year. After which, there will remain the Yakuza / Judgment archives, memories and games that have always made it a point of honor to preserve a piece of this heritage.
“SEGA brands across the country will change their names to GiGO, to express our gratitude for SEGA’s 56-year history and our desire to be an oasis that quenches people’s thirst for entertainment. We will start with Ikebukuro, Akihabara and Shinjuku. Then it will be the turn of the whole country“, commented Nao Kataoka, CEO of GENDA. Note that even if he gives up the management of any establishment, SEGA will still be able to develop arcade games.
