Sayonara, Sega.

Is Sega still in the arcade business?

That’s a hard question to answer. Walk around cities in Japan, and you can still spot Sega-brand arcades, with the video game company’s instantly recognizable logo above the entranceway doors. However, at the start of last year Sega’s parent company Sega Sammy Holdings sold off over 85 percent of the stock for Sega Entertainment, the subsidiary in charge of managing the company’s arcades. That stock was bought up by Tokyo-based amusement management company Genda, making them the new owners/operators of the nearly 200 Sega arcades in Japan.

Sega is still a name that carries a lot of goodwill with gamers, though, and Genda seemed eager to connect itself with the brand, mildly renaming Sega Entertainment to Genda Sega Entertainment last January. A year later, though, things have changed, and the company has announced that it’s changing its name again, this time to Genda GiGo Entertainment, and that the Sega name will be scrubbed from its arcades.

全国のSEGAのお店の屋号をGiGOに切り替えていきます。SEGAの56年の歴史への感謝と、リアルなエンタメで人々の渇望を癒すオアシスになるという思いを込めました。ゲームのオアシスに飛び込め！Get into the Gaming Oasis の頭文字をとってGiGOです。
まずは池袋、秋葉原、新宿から。そして全国へ。 pic.twitter.com/bAMbdIXEkk

— 片岡 尚 / GENDA会長 (@GENDA_Kataoka) January 28, 2022

Genda director Sho Kataoka tweeted the announcement, saying:

“We will be changing the names of all Sega arcades nationwide to GiGO. We thank Sega for its 56 years of history in the arcade industry, and hope to be an oasis that quenches people’s thirst for real entertainment. GiGO is an acronym for Get into the Gaming Oasis!

The first arcades to be renamed will be those in [Tokyo’s] Ikebukuro, Akihabara, and Shinjuku [neighborhoods], followed by arcades in the rest of the country.”

GiGO was actually one of a number of sub-brands for Sega’s arcades, including now-closed game centers in Akihabara and Osaka’s Shinsaibashi district. Sega’s iconic Ikebukuro arcade continued using the GiGO name up until its closing …continue reading