Sega fine with flying solo

Electronic Arts might be interested in buying Take-Two--possibly even considering a hostile takeover after the company spurned its advances-- and Activision and Blizzard may now be happily in bed together, but Sega Sammy reckons it's better off alone.

Simon Jeffrey, the CEO of Sega of America, told Reuters in an interview that as far as mergers and acquisitions go, "That's not an area we want to play in right now. We have no interest in being acquired; we are very happy with our position right now."

The executive also admitted that the company was slightly taken aback with the success of its Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games for the Wii and DS. He said, "I don't think we believed in our wildest dreams that it would sell 5 million in just three months." The publisher, which just released The Club for the Xbox 360, also has another Olympics game title in the works, along with a role-playing game and a first-person shooter based on the classic sci-fi film Aliens. Its God of War-like action-adventure, Viking: Battle for Asgard from the Creative Assembly, comes out later this month.

Sega Sammy is currently the sixth-biggest publisher in the US by revenue, according to data from NPD. That's a position that it is happy with, states Jeffrey. He said, "There is plenty of room for smaller companies to be successful and profitable in this business. You don't have to be number one or number two. You can be number six very happily."