14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher SEGA has announced that it has signed a deal which will see it distribute all the games that Electronic Arts launches on the Japanese market, with the first video game affected by the move being Shadows of the Damned, which is set to launch at some point during September.
SEGA will take over all distribution duties for EA games during the month of August and affects those titles that are distributed at the moment by other partners.
Electronic Arts believes that it can use the distribution network that SEGA has and its knowledge of the local gaming market to move more video games to customers than it does at the moment.
On the other hand, SEGA gains an increased catalog of titles for the Japanese market and might see an increase in overall revenue.
Shadows of the Damned has been created by Grasshoper Manufacture and will be a kind of test bed for the new SEGA – Electronic Arts deal, showing whether there's a noticeable effect in having a local company handle distribution duties.
The Japanese gaming market has been seen as in decline during the last few years, with less video games moved to gamers and a smaller number of companies managing to turn profits when focusing on the domestic space.
A number of developers have said that the Japanese gaming industry as a whole is in crisis mainly because of a lack of innovation when it comes to development and to a lack of ideas that can attract the attention of Western gamers.
Still, giants like Sony and Nintendo have managed to prosper in the last few years, before the devastation created by the earthquake and the tsunami, while smaller companies have been affected by financial problems.
It's not yet clear how long the distribution deal between Electronic Arts and SEGA will run for.