Believe it or not: Sega goes soft

"What's that you say? 'Nintendo buys Sega'? Yeah, right-when hell freezes over…so how is the temperature in hell these days?"

Okay, okay…so despite what The New York Times reported, Nintendo did not buy Sega, but, believe it or not, such a thing would not be as ridiculous of a happening as it would have been 8 years ago when Sega and Nintendo were fierce competitors in the console industry.

Indeed, Sega has fallen, they are down, posting quarterly losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fourth time in a row, but they are not out. In fact, Sega's future appears to be a bright one as the company is now officially third party. From now on, Sega will only be making games for other companies' systems.

While this isn't necessarily an industry-shaking change, it is one that will come with a certain weight of significance to anyone who lived as a hardcore gamer during the "great" 16-bit console days of the past. In those days, Sega and Nintendo were such fierce archenemies as far as business was concerned, that the idea of, some day in the relatively near future, Sega dropping out of the console industry altogether was unthinkable. Yet this day has indeed come upon us.

That is not to say that it is truly that surprising. After all, even given the rapid expansion of the videogame industry's consumer base, it was always hard to believe that four competitors (Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony) could all survive this next generation of consoles. Indeed, it turns out that Sega was the one to take the hit. Despite what I consider to be their best marketing since the original Genesis system, Sega has finally resigned to the status of third party. Not that being a third party developer is a bad thing at all. Every true gamer knows that it's the games, not the console, that matters in the end. Many of the industry's most respected developers, such as Squaresoft, Electronic Arts, and Midway, have always been third party, and have made video games all the better for it over the many years of their existence.

Sega has already announced several titles in the works for their former opponents' systems. "Virtual Fighter 4" and "Space Channel 5" are in production for Sony's Playstation 2, and "Sonic the Hedgehog Advance" and "Chu Chu Rocket" are in production for Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, their new hand-held console to be released this summer.

This is not necessarily such bad news for Dreamcast owners, however. Although Sega will stop production of the Dreamcast console on March 31sth, 2001, the system will continue to be sold, for $99.99, at retailers across the country, and 30 titles are planned for release for the system by the end of the year.

In PC news, the excellent "Baldur's Gate II" looks to be getting an expansion, as well as the Sims, which will be getting it's second expansion soon. Both the Sims and it's first expansion, "Livin' Large," have been in the top 10 selling games for quite some time now.

Look for a good, long list of reviews next week (I did not have room this week due to this unexpectedly significant news).

Until then…I'll see you on the network!