According to an
article published in the New York Times
today, Nintendo may be discussing a buy-out with Sega. However, it's a tricky situation,
and it seems that neither side is ready to publicly confess to such negotiations if they
are going on. The New York Times article reports:
"According to executives close
to the negotiations, the two companies are holding discussions that could lead to Nintendo
acquiring Sega for about $2 billion, though the terms of the transaction are still being
negotiated.
The talks have been going on in fits and starts for
months, the executives said, and the deal could still collapse.
A Sega spokesman, Munehiro Umemura, strongly denied a deal
was in the works. He said the idea was 'absolutely outrageous' and used a Japanese word
that can mean unfounded rumor or outright falsehood.
A spokesman for Nintendo laughed when asked whether the
companies were in talks. 'In this industry there are various kinds of rumors.'"
Read
the whole article here.
To further underscore their denial, both Sega and Nintendo
came out with press releases today. We'll post these as soon as they become available, but
GameWeek has posted a few choice
quotes:
"According to Nintendo
President Hiroshi Yamauchi, 'the information reported by some overseas media that our
company will buy out Sega is all wrong, and we express with 100 percent certainty that our
company will not buy out Sega.'
Sega commented, 'The report that Nintendo is in talks with Sega to buy
us out is groundless and Sega flatly denies the report.'"
Sega currently sits at second place in the console game
market, garnering approximately 18% of game and hardware sales. Although the company would
like to be doing better, this story may still never amount to anything. After all, a few
months ago we heard rumors that Sega was in negotiations with Microsoft, and that never
came to fruition. We'll just have to hold on and wait.
Shawn
Rider |