Sega arcade development chief resigns

Sega veteran Rikiya Nakagawa has resigned from his position as president of Sega's arcade development subsidiary Sega WOW, ending two decades of service for the company, with no official explanation forthcoming as yet.

Nakagawa-san has been with Sega since 1983, when he joined the company as a programmer, and has served as president at Sega WOW since 2000. He will be replaced by Kazunori Tsukamoto, who has worked on arcade titles including House of the Dead and Super GT.

Sega has not commented on the resignation other than to confirm it and announce Nakagawa-san's successor, but the timing of the announcement has raised eyebrows both in Japan and abroad.

It comes mere weeks after Sammy took a massive stake in Sega, and announced that it wanted Sega to change its development focus to encompass more arcade development - preferably on the Sammy Atomiswave low-cost platform.

Although Atomiswave is based on a CPU similar to that used in Sega's old Naomi arcade boards, and indeed in the Dreamcast, this would be a step back for Sega's arcade division, which has more recently been working on the Chihiro Xbox-based arcade board and the Gamecube-based Triforce system.

It's not too much of a leap to imagine that Nakagawa-san's abrupt resignation might be something to do with the demands of Sega's new masters at Sammy - and if so, it would hint that the dissent within Sega regarding Sammy's intentions runs even deeper than either company is prepared to admit.