SEGA to take on Nintendo with official store in the same building

SEGA has revealed that it intends to expand into retail and open two new official stores selling SEGA merchandise.

Speaking at Gamescom Asia, the head of SEGA’s transmedia team, Justin Scarpone, stated that one of these stores will be located in the Shibuya Parco department building in Tokyo.

Our portfolio is very broad, but the common thread is the SEGA brand. SEGA already has a surprising amount of fandom as a brand, and we need to look after those fans and offer new experiences to them, while putting the stamp of Sega on it more proudly.

If you go to retail today, you don’t see SEGA enough. For example, we’re opening a SEGA store next summer in [the Shibuya] Parco. There will be a SEGA store. We’re also going to be doing a similar project in Shanghai, where we’ll have a store there as well via a partner.

It’s really exciting and we need to do a lot more of that, because SEGA is a consumer brand that is surprisingly not in front of consumers enough. Sonic is, but SEGA isn’t.
Justin Scarpone, SEGA

The Shibuya Parco building is also home both Nintendo’s Tokyo store and the Shibuya Pokémon Center store. SEGA expect that the Shibuya store will open in summer 2025.

The Mewtwo display at the Pokémon Center store in Shibuya

The Shibuya Parco building is split into a number of themed floors with the Nintendo and Pokemon stores located on the sixth floor “CYBERSPACE SHIBUYA”.

Banner for CYBERSPACE SHIBUYA showing the Nintendo and Pokémon stores

It is highly likely that the SEGA store will be located in the same area and will therefore be in direct competition with both of those stores as well as the official stores of two other popular Japanese game developers, CAPCOM and Koei Tecmo.

The CAPCOM Tokyo Store located in Shibuya

The Koei Tecmo Spot Tokyo Store located in Shibuya

A second SEGA store is expected to open in Shangai but no information has been provided regarding the location or when it is expected to open.

While SEGA does operate a small store at their Joypolis attraction in Tokyo, it largely focuses on Sonic merchandise, character goods and Tokyo themed tourist items.

This latest expansion into retail marks a return to fully SEGA branded stores in Japan as the company previously opened several SEGA Specialty Stores in the 90s, but these were closed in the early 2000s.

Source: VGC