One of the developers was Hisashi Suzuki who previously was in charge of autodesign at Tokyu Kogyu Kurogane, he changed jobs to Sega in 1964, which then was called Nihon Goraku Bussan.

Sega rarely outsourced their games, much like Namco and Taito, as it was hard to find other companies that could do design, manufacturing, marketing and maintenance all at once.

Hideki Sato was part of a development team that mainly had around 20 people, and they were engaged in pinball tables and electro-mechanical games.

Hayao Nakayama, who later became president, joined Sega after the purchase of game distribution company Esco Trading.

[3] Sega learned a lot about programming and software after purchasing Gremlin Industries in 1978, which was located in San Diego.

[4] System 2 was also capable of displaying multiple screens which was used in a horse racing medal game called Super Derby.

[6]In terms of software developers, Yoji Ishii joined 1978, and was involved in sound engineering on various titles like Monaco GP and Zaxxon, before being involved in the planning section working on early arcade titles like Up'n Down, Sindbad Mystery, Flicky, Teddy Boy Blues and Fantasy Zone.

Examples of this include the 3D Dungeons of Phantasy Star, the Mark III version of Hokuto no Ken (overseas known as Black Belt) or ports of the arcade games Space Harrier, Super Thunder Blade and the Capcom game Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

[10] The Genesis generally marked a turning point were more original software for consoles began development such as Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, The Revenge of Shinobi, Phantasy Star II and Sword of Vermillion.

[30][35][36] AM5 was established which at first made kiddie rides with monitors, which were successful but went on to make large scale attractions, one of which was the VR-1, an early example of Virtual Reality.

[38] Putting to use what Naka learned by porting Ghouls 'n Ghosts to the Genesis, he went on to develop Sonic the Hedgehog, along with artist Naoto Oshima and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara.

[40][41][42] Japanese game development also expanded externally with SIMS, which was previously Sanritsu, and Sonic Software Planning!

[13] Other worldwide successes developed by the Japanese group were Streets of Rage II and Phantasy Star IV which were appreciated in all parts of the world.

According to hardware developer Masami Ishikawa, Sega was able to increase performance and storage, and thus was able to release a nice RPG on it.

[44] RPG's were the most popular in Japan, and the RPG's from Game Arts were an important asset for Sega, but those games as well as Sega's own Shining and Phantasy Star series were unable to compete with Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Ys I&II.

Sega Saturn projects were much larger in comparison to other teams at the time, scaling up from the five or ten people involved in Master System or Genesis games.

[79] Tetsuya Mizuguchi, head of United Game Artist, saw this initially as a move of Sega of being more similar to Hollywood, where distribution and development were becoming more and more separated.

[U 19] Toshihiro Nagoshi recalls this period as labour of love from Sega, "teaching the creatives the way of managing a business".

[80] Hisao Oguchi who lead the Hitmaker studio had a suspicion that this structure was made to separate the creators who were able to make profit and the ones who didn't, as they were many projects that didn't hit the mark, and at one point Sega was hiring hundreds of developers a year, effecting costs that were no longer manageable.

Hitmaker was attributed the successful card arcade games in Japan that Sega was developing at the time, which started with Derby Owners Club and continued with World Club Champion Football, Mushiking: The King of Beetles and Love & Berry: Dress up and Dance!.

Particularly Mushiking and Love & Berry supported Sega with very strong sales in the Japanese market, although Hitmaker was not involved with those titles.

Nagoshi observed Nintendo management from the bottom all the way to the top,and was very surprised with how uniform the opinions at the company were, saying "no wonder we lost!".

[112][113][114][115] Particularly the Yakuza / Like a Dragon games by the New Entertainment department already became a franchise for Sega in 2006, and they were motivated to develop it into a character brand similarly to Sonic the Hedgehog, Mushiking and Love & Berry.

[116][117]: p.21  According to the now former manager Hisashi Suzuki, the Like a Dragon series was only possible due to the experience of Shenmue,[1] and it also inherited elements of the SpikeOut arcade games.

Particularly Phantasy Star Online 2 was very much developed to be multi-platform with the addition of the PC platform and Vita, it also having versions available on iOS and Android.

[170] According to AM2 developer Makoto Osaki, Sega shifted its focus to internet games in the arcades rather than huge cabinets after server maintenance costs went down.

[172] Music games was another area of success for Sega with Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Arcade and Maimai, both of which received many updates.

Atlus USA made it possible to localize Japanese Sega IP Yakuza and Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA to the western market.

+ AM Plus The COVID-19 pandemic caused Sega to restructure their arcade business and place some of its developers onto console and smartphone games.

According to Sega Sammy CEO Haruki Satomi, Lost Judgment and Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis are first steps into fulfilling this framework.