Sega Further Denies Buyout Rumors

Recently, the New York Times reported that Nintendo Company Limited was in buyout negotiations with Sega Corporation. The report claimed that Nintendo was interested in buying Sega in its entirety for an approximate amount of US$2 billion. Since the report originally ran, both Nintendo and Sega officials were quick to flatly deny the buyout rumors. Nintendo president and representative director Hiroshi Yamauchi denied the rumors by simply stating through the company's Web site that the Times report was mistaken and, in his words, 100 percent inaccurate. Sega of Japan's PR department echoed similar comments by releasing a statement saying that, "We, at Sega Corporation, would like to announce that [the New York Times] report is completely false, and would like to deny all reports related to the matter."

Over the weekend Sega of Japan released an additional statement, this time from its executive vice president Shunichi Nakamura, restating the company's position in denying the report and discussing the adverse affects it had on the company's stock, business partners, and its consumers. Nakamura's complete statement is as follows:

"While Sega has always been fond of The New York Times' objective coverage of our company, we would like to express our concern over the fallacy that appeared on 12/27/00 regarding Nintendo's buy out of Sega. Not only did this erroneous allegation cause the trade of Sega's corporate stock to be temporarily suspended while substantially influencing Sega and Nintendo's stock prices, it caused unnecessary confusion among stockholders, affiliated companies, business partners, and end-users of both companies. It also severely damaged Sega's corporate and brand image during a very precarious time in the video game industry.

Although top executives of Sega and Nintendo flatly and completely denied the rumor, The New York Times has published yet another article containing similar content on 12/29/00. Such repeated and arbitrary publication of groundless statements is pure harassment and unacceptable obstruction of our business, which we cannot overlook.

We believe that The New York Times as a news organization is heavily responsible for this misinformation.

Sega Corporation is requesting that The New York Times immediately run a notification and apology for the fallacious feature in the same scale and manner as the initial article. We expect The New York Times to address this issue in the honorable tradition of a respectable news source by taking the appropriate and responsible measures toward reparations."

GameSpot will continue to follow these recent developments and will bring you further details.