After seeing a fair bit of success in Japan, SEGA America has decided to enter the wireless market too. A new subsidiary called SEGA Mobile has been established, which will focus on creating bite-size games for cellular phones, PDAs and other such handheld devices.
It looks like, in the North American market, SEGA Mobile will be leveraging its classic heritage. The first game for mobile phones and PDAs will be Monkey Ball in the summer, followed by Pengo, Flicky, Puyo Puyo and Monaco GP – all of which are vintage arcade or Mega Drive titles.
Gamespot has a quote from Ryoichi Shiratsuchi, CEO of Sega.com and general manager of Sega Mobile Japan, who seems very happy about the whole thing. “Staying true to our history of innovation in the gaming industry, Sega.com continues to push the boundaries and expand the video game market into new territories with the launch of the Sega Mobile division.
“Bringing great Sega content to wireless platforms is another step toward Sega.com’s goal of bringing networked gaming to all devices and thereby extending the pastime to mainstream audiences across the world.”
Nice one mate, couldn’t have said it better myself. As we said, SEGA Japan has already had a bit of success in the mobile gaming space already; you can check out some of the Sonic titles already released (Sonic, Golf, Fishing) as well as the Sonic Cafe service.