Sega Japan announced today that it was in talks with Microsoft about possibly developing online games for the software giant's Xbox game machine.
"We've been in talks with Microsoft about making online games for their machine. We have the know-how to make online games and are already ready to make those games for Xbox," Sega spokesman Hiroyuki Soga told CBS.
Sega is already in the process of developing some game software for Microsoft's Xbox, which was supposed to be released in Japan by the Christmas shopping season. Earlier this week, Microsoft said it was delaying the launch until February 22 to focus on the U.S. market. Microsoft is pinning its hopes on the Internet capabilities of its Xbox game machine and has been looking for partners to develop Internet games for the console.
Microsoft spokesman Kazuyuki Takada confirmed the talks, saying the company wants Sega to develop online games which can make full use of the Xbox's broadband capability. Hooking up with Microsoft would be a big plus for Sega, which has reported a string of losses over the last few years due to heavy competition with Nintendo and Sony in the hotly competitive game machine market.
Microsoft's Xbox machine is scheduled to make its debut in the U.S. market on November 8. The company plans to sell 1 million to 1.5 million of units in the U.S. by the end of this year. The machine is expected to be Internet-accessible by the end of 2002.
In January, Sega announced it was refocusing its business away from developing game machines to supplying software and Internet games for its former rivals. Despite a failure in hardware business, however, Sega is still known with its ability of making popular game titles. The company last December released "Phantasy Star Online," a role-playing Internet game for its Dreamcast game console.
The award-winning online game, which claims over 3 million subscribers today, has a built-in automatic translation system for 5 different languages -- Japanese, English, French, German, and Spanish -- to enable users to communicate worldwide via chat.
The Tokyo-based game maker also announced earlier this month it would produce "Phantasy Star Online" for Nintendo's GameCube machine, which is expected to hit Japanese store shelves on September 14.
SOURCE:
FT Marketwatch.
