For 56 years, SEGA has been keeping arcade patrons happy by continually delivering quality experiences in arcade quality. Sadly, we’ve learned SEGA quits the arcade business as the company quietly sold off the rest of their shares.

We learned (from Denfaminico Gamer, via The Tojo Dojo) SEGA quits the arcade business by selling off the remaining shares of their arcade business to Japanese entertainment company Genda.

After buying 85.1% of the SEGA arcade business back in 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns, GENDA SEGA is now going to be rebranding as GENDA GIGO and continuing to serve the arcade needs in Japan for the foreseeable future.

COVID-19 had a massive impact on the arcade scene as people weren’t willing to be close to each other and even spacing out play sessions still would have caused a lot of concern – not only the outright closing of businesses until the virus had been somewhat controlled.

Now that mandates have lifted and people are returning to some sense of normality, the arcade industry is seeing a bit of a revitalization but SEGA Sammy still decided that this was their best option was to sell off the remaining 14.9% of their shares to GENDA GIGO.

What does this mean for the SEGA Sammy Corporation? There’s been quite a bit of speculation that Microsoft might be looking to acquire SEGA/Atlus as a fairly good amount of Atlus games in particular are often exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation.

SEGA/Atlus has agreed to a partnership with Microsoft, but has denied the rumors of acquisition. As Microsoft has been gobbling up developers recently, perhaps there’s still some merit to the rumors as getting out of the arcade business would certainly put them in a better spot for purchase.

From a personal standpoint, if SEGA is looking to be acquired, I feel like they’d do better selling Atlus to Sony and letting Nintendo purchase the SEGA side of the house. What do you guys think? Would you like to see Microsoft pick up SEGA/Atlus? Let us know in the comments below.