Sega hasn't gotten themselves out of the hole they fell into with two failed consoles. Further, Sonic Adventure was a huge hit on GC, while Sega's games on PS2 and Xbox, including Virtua Fighter, which Sega was counting on, fell kind of flat.

Sega has a good relationship with Microsoft, and the bundle deal is making money for them on games that probably otherwise wouldn't have worked out well.

I've always thought Sega's sports would be better off leading EA on one console than languishing on all of them. I kind of expected the one would be Xbox, but this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

Nobody expected Rare going to MS, and nobody expected Square/Enix. So, we'll see.

A lot of people called Rare to MS early, Scandal, you're the one that had to see it to believe it. Now you are jumping on this half-assed rumor like crazy. It's a good thing you are consistent.

I read a financial article months ago showing them in the black already. It pays to have three companys bidding on your services.

You noticed that too, huh?

No. They called Rare's departure a couple of weeks early when Rare pulled its games in progress off the website.

Most people expected them to go third party or sell to Activision. MS was a surprise.

Anyway, with Rare going to MS and Square going to Enix, I'm a little more likely to accept weird possibilities, but I'm not jumping on weird rumors.

A lot of people thought a Capcom buyout was likely, and the Sega thing seems farfetched, but it would be par for the course in this weird console war.

I don't believe anything until there's something credible, and this is just speculation. All I said was that Sega's modest profits as a games only company haven't come anywhere close to making up for the tremendous debts the company fell into trying to push hardware through the failures of 32X, Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast.

Nintendo has a lot of cash in reserve, and is more profitable than Sega. They could eat Sega's debt. Microsoft, of course, could eat it a lot easier. Investment people have been saying for quite a while that selling out was the best thing Sega could do for its investors. Sega has vigorously insisted they're not on the block, but Rare insisted it had a happy marriage with Nintendo.

I personally don't think buying Sega would be a good move for Nintendo. Virtua Fighter is Sega's best franchise, and the Gamecube controller is horrible for fighting games. Sonic is redundant in Nintendo's mascot lineup.

Microsoft would be a better match, because many Dreamcast owners always viewed Xbox as the successor to the DC. There's definitely a market for Sega on Xbox, or at least Microsoft certainly seems to think so with their bundle deal. Further, Xbox can probably push the best eye candy for games like VF and Panzer Dragoon (though Rogue Leader looked incredible).

Sega's games are good, but they're quirky and draw a limited audience. They're not worth what they'd cost, at least, not to Nintendo. The cost would be a much smaller issue to MS, who needs first party development muscle and claims to be willing to "double down" its multibillion dollar investment.

Why would Nintendo shell for Sega? I can see a couple of reasons. First, maybe they see possibilities for synergy between Sega's talent stable and Nintendo's. This sort of partnership turned out Metroid Prime from Retro, who nobody had ever heard of. Nintendo, perhaps, thinks they know how to polish Sega's games and make system sellers out of niche titles.

Second, Nintendo wants to pre-empt Microsoft. They figure, if they buy Sega, Microsoft can't. MS is left with NFL Fever as its online football game. If Nintendo makes a move like this, Microsoft would probably have to buy EA or something to hang on in the console race.

In any case, if there's going to be an announcement tuesday, the surprise could plausibly seep out a couple of days early. Or somebody is yanking our chains

Revisionist history, go back and read those threads (if they are still alive) and you'll see a lot of us were talking about Rare going to MS.

Capcom to Nintendo maybe. Sega, no way in hell.

That means they announced profits for one quarter. It doesn't mean they are out of the hole they dug themselves into over the last decade.

Amazon announced earnings too. It doesn't mean they've paid off the tens of millions they've lost over the past 5 years.

A few points a rebuttals:
First off the Nintendo BUYING Sega is bogus to begin with, read the first post. There is a HUGE difference in BUYING Sega, and MERGING with them. Sega can release as many games on the other systems as they see fit. If they are 1 merged company, Nintendo will see all the money. If they did do this, they could pick and choose the exclusives, and on the games that are released to all systems, have superior graphics, extra boards or features, etc. on the GCN version to give an incentive to get a cube.

Now on to the Sports thing. Someone above is so quick to dismiss the 2K line on Xbox for the EA alternative. Remember EA isn't on XBLive. That hurts. And good thinking on Sega already having a network for online gaming set up, that would be a huge coup for Nintendo. Sports gaming fans tend to be die hards. They have their series and that is what they play. Exclusivity of the 2k line would help(as long as they bring the graphics up to par), especially if it is online while EA is not.

Also mentioned is Steel Batallion 2 just being released. So what. Didn't MS buy Rare the week Starfox was released?

Capcom: Didn't they shun N64. My how the days change. Also, Mega Man on GCN would be fine with me as well. They need to get back to the roots of the first 3 games on NES though.

Anyway, if any of this is true at all, I think it can only help Nintendo. We will see on Tuesday. Maybe the big announcement is a line of Spice, Jet, Indigo and Platinum Wavebirds with rumble(and sell them for $70, LOL - Logitech). It could be anything, really.

Who's calling out this Tuesday thing? Is this some random day that somebody says the big annoucement will happen on or does Nintendo really have a press conference scheduled to annouce something for that day?

Sports has been a disaster for GCN. If Sega has any sense at all, they would keep their sports line as multi-console and just keep trying to exceed the quality of the EA line.

If the impossible happens and Sega does merge, I wouldn't care at all if everything Sega goes exclusive to GCN except for sports games. Leave those alone. If sports games get affected by this, then that really sucks....

Xbox or GC would be a good place for sports games. Sega could make their games look better than Madden on either of those platforms.

On Xbox, they get the upper hand because Madden won't go online on that platform.

On GC, they win out because EA sports don't make a good transition to the GC controller.

NFL2k3 was a close competitor quality-wise with Madden, but Madden obliterated it in sales. Sega has nothing to gain by putting out a football game on PS2.

Sega is an interesting beast for those of you that really want to look into it.

There are multiple divisions in Sega that is produced by Sega proper. The divisions include teams such as AM2, WOW, Amusement Vision, Sonic Team, Smilebit, Visual Concepts, Hitmaker, etc. Just recently Sega announced a 4 (I believe) person group to oversee the divisions.

The key thing to think of here is that each division runs their own ship. They run their own money, development, etc. Sega really isn't Sega anymore. They just produce it under the Sega name, but in reality it is the divisions putting the games out.

The more realistic avenue is that each division would align itself with one console or allow itself to be "bought out" to a console. Sonic Team and AM2 would be the most anxious of the teams to fall into this. I believe both teams want to release on multiple platforms. Recent rumors have talked about Yu Suzuki leaving and creating his own company as well as Yuji Naka making Sonic Team its own separate entity outside the Sega umbrella.

A rumor that is building steam...Visual Concepts to Sony: Problem here is that you lose multi-platform games, but the loss may not be felt too much except on the X-Box.

The most likely thing is Sega breaking apart, I do not think Sony can be bought or merged as a whole anymore. Chances are a few divisions would leave and create their own companies.

This is an interesting time for Sega...they are an interesting beast indeed.

Well, every developer has different teams working on different games.

Sega's teams are more pronounced, in that they have names and logos, but I don't know that their actual operations are unusual among larger developers.

Also, I don't know if the business infrastructure exists to sell the different teams to different buyers, or if Sega would want to do that. It would be an undignified end for Sega to be scrapped for parts and sold piece by piece on the auction block.

Also, isn't Visual Concepts the sports house that does the NFL game? Why would Sony want them? NFL2k2 and 2k3 did horribly on the Playstation. Sony fans stick with Madden. Visual Concepts would be better off anywhere else, and, having had their own failures with 989, I don't know why Sony would want to try to publish its own football game again.

Sales wise NFL2K3 may not have done well, but it was a good football game. 989 has put out nothing but garbage by comparison. I can see something like Sega breaking apart and selling Visual Concepts to Sony who could use them.

Who knows maybe Smilebit and WOW get sold to Microsoft and Sonic Team and AM2 go to Nintendo.

I'm throwing around pure nonsense, but if a Nintendo and Sega merger were true I think it would be more something like this. I just don't see Nintendo and Sega merging with each other just to support the GameCube. I thought this was the very thing Sega was trying to get away from.

I guess we will find out something tomorrow, but I won't be shocked if nothing is said and it all turns out to be rumor.

Anybody can inflate a quarter by ballooning debt or discounting inventory but thats not what happened in this case. The numbers had been getting better since the change of their business model and they were profitable in less than a year. You can point out all the irrelevant bad accounting examples you want, but Sega isnt Amazon, Enron or Walmart. If you have any valid reason to think that its a statistical blip on the long term radar you gotta do better than that.

So no one stated, where does this supposed "Tuesday announcement" info come from?

Out of my butt. About 5pm.

That is hilarious.

Cubenation is reporting that the announcement is 3-5 new Capcom games (in addition to the 5 previous ones) plus a Pokemon game. They are also reporting that there are no plans to buy Capcom or Sega.

That seems a little more believable. Pokemon is almost assuredly coming at some point. I still have some doubts about the Capcom portion though. That would make 8-10 new Capcom games. That seems like a lot, even for Capcom. They don't mention what time frame the games would come out in.

They also suggest there might be a GBA 2 soon.

Cubenation is just talking out of their ass, just like everybody else.

I know. That is why it fits in perfectly with the rest of this thread.

Forgive my ignorance, but is there really that big of a demand for more Pokemon stuff? I thought that fad came and went? Why would that be part of any big announcement?

I still see kids buying Pokemon cards, and I think the new GBA version is pretty hotly anticipated.

It's definitely still huge in Japan, and Nintendo's a Japanese company.

Pokemon may have come and gone but it still sells a lot of games. Having 10 EXCLUSIVES by Capcom is a big announcement in and of itself.

I can believe them buying Capcom, Sega merging this soon after becoming a third party developer wouldn't make much sense, especially since their overhead is now much lower and they seem to be turning a profit.

Man if Sega became part of Nintendo I think I would cry. I don't know why I and countless others have a very strange devotion to Sega. It must be their place in gaming history because it sure isn't the quality of their games lately (I love most of their games but lately there has been a lack of AAA titles pumped out by them)