At its board of directors meeting today, Sega decided to introduce a new management structure. Under this new structure current chairman Hajime Satomi will become president, CEO and COO of Sega, while current COO Hisao Oguchi will become executive vice president. The move is aimed to speed up the decision making regarding the following major issues: improvement of earnings from consumer games, radical changes in the amusement facility business as well as clarification of Sega's future strategy towards its amusement facilities outside Japan. By focusing its development capabilities on its core businesses, Sega aims to improve its asset efficiency, sales growth and profitability. In today's press release, Hajime Satomi acknowledged that shareholders can't be content with Sega's results thus far. Hence he wanted to team up with Oguchi to make sure the future looked brighter for the house that built Sonic and Phantasy Star.

Hideki Okamura will remain in charge of Sega's overall consumer game operations. Similiarly, the company's six R&D creative directors including Yuu Suzuki, Sega AM2's Hiroshi Kataoka, Amusement Vision's Toshihiro Nagoshi retained their positions.

• Official Sega Website (JP)