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The new Sega boss aims to have a new genesis and revive the 80s & 90s "Sega Spirit"

While Sega isn't likely to delve into the console business again, their current president would love to see them lean into the "rock and roll" vibe they used to have.

Sonic The Hedgehog Game Screenshot — Image credit: Sega

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Wed Jul 09 2025

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If you were a kid in the early 90s, you probably remember the slogan “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” being a key part of how Sega wanted to differentiate itself from Nintendo. The idea was that Sega was the cooler, more edgy company, and the Genesis (or Mega Drive for the rest of the world) was the more rock and roll console. That’s a vibe that current Sega president Shuji Utsumi wants to recapture as he hopes to rekindle that Sega Spirit.

Utsumi explained this desire during a recent interview. Between conversations about how he plans to bring Sega back to prominence in the gaming industry and the future of Sonic the Hedgehog, he talked about the rebellious nature of Sega during its earlier days.

“I’d really like to revive that Sega spirit,” Utsumi said. “Sometime around 2000, even around the 1980s, we were regarded as a very cultural company. If you compare it to the music industry, I believe Sega brings rock and roll. In the arcade business, we really had a rock and roll mindset and trying to provide new stuff. So nowadays, we want Sega to always be trying something different, while respecting the old times.”

Of course, this is a very different gaming industry than when Sega was positioned as the biggest competitor to Nintendo. The company no longer makes consoles and instead acts as a developer and publisher for multiple studios. That means the Sega spirit is a little different than it used to be. “I was with the music industry for a while, so I see these different groups [within Sega] like labels. So, there’s Football Manager, Persona, Like a Dragon… all these production lines are like a label, with different art directions, attitudes, and culture. But what’s really common is the attitude towards quality, personality, and creativity.”

“We encourage them to be pushing the edge and trying something new. That’s the value that we like to have in common [between teams]. Sega is always trying to empower the gamer to stimulate and challenge their norm. That’s how I see Sega.”

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