Earlier this year, SEGA posted a promotional video to celebrate their 55th anniversary. Interestingly, the video was not just meant for the public, but it was also made to boost morale among SEGA employees. SEGA Games CEO Haruki Satomi mentioned this in a recent financial statement:
To better communicate the new SEGA Group’s mission and target profile, we produced a mission video and distributed it widely in-house. As a result, I have a real sense that employees are steadily regaining pride. Although the SEGA brand that we established around the world has weakened, we still have name recognition. By pursuing quality rigorously and continuing to exceed expectations, I want to regain trust and restore the SEGA brand’s luster.
Today, SEGA posted an update version of the trailer, and made the old trailer unavailable for viewing. Rather cryptically, the video’s description mentions a content update without revealing exactly what had changed, so I went and compared the old and new video. As it turns out, the new video removes all references to Index Corporation. Back in 2013, SEGA acquired Index Corporation after the latter had filed for bankruptcy. Because of that deal SEGA also acquired Atlus, one of Index Corporation’s subsidiaries. Afterwards, SEGA completely separated Atlus and Index Corporation into separate subsidiaries, and later announced that they would be selling all shares of Index Corporation to Sawada Holdings. Just to be clear, this means Atlus is still part of SEGA. It’s only the non-gaming business from Index Corporation that was sold. It seems that the transfer of Index Corporation was enough reason for SEGA to update their promotional video and remove all references to their old subsidiary. While the differences aren’t really noticeable, it’s as good an excuse as any to watch the video again, which you can find here:
