Sega leaves the Japanese arcade business for good

polygon.com:

Sega is leaving Japanese arcades behind. The company announced it is selling its remaining arcades to a company called Genda, Inc. (also known as GiGO), and leaving the coin-op business, where it first made a name for itself, for good.

Sega’s first arcade game was Periscope, which launched in the late 1960s, and the company has been a major player in the arcade industry ever since. Even though arcades all over the world have been in a steady decline over the past 20 years, owing to the ubiquity of console and PC gaming, they’ve kept a fairly major place in Japan’s gaming culture.

However, in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, even Japan’s arcades started to falter. In late 2020 Sega sold 85% of its shares in the company’s arcades, which are run by the Sega Entertainment division, to Genda. Now, as new variants of COVID-19 crop up and the arcade business continues to struggle, Sega has sold the remaining shares to Genda as well, according to Eurogamer and Tojodojo.

Sega’s arcades will be renamed GiGO throughout Japan, according to a tweet from Genda chief executive Takashi Kataoka.