{"id":476380,"date":"2026-02-15T11:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476380\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T11:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:24:10","slug":"segas-former-president-hideki-sato-passes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476380\/","title":{"rendered":"Sega&#8217;s Former President Hideki Sato Passes Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a sad day for the gaming industry no matter how you look at it, but if you&#8217;re old enough (and Sega enough) to have grown up with any of the company&#8217;s consoles, it&#8217;s an even sadder one. Hideki Sato has passed away at age 77.<\/p>\n<p>For those who aren&#8217;t familiar with him, Sato is commonly called &#8220;the father of Sega hardware.&#8221; More on that in a sec, seeing as I pilfered the line directly from the tweet that&#8217;s been spreading the news of the legendary creator&#8217;s passing. From most of Sega&#8217;s earliest days as a console manufacturer, all the way up through its last hurrah with the Dreamcast, Sato was the leading figure in the design approach to each and every one of them.<\/p>\n<p>                        We&#8217;ll Miss You<\/p>\n<p> As GSK notes above\u2014as the account re-tweets Japanese gaming magazine Beep21&#8217;s announcement\u2014Hideki Sato also led Sega as its president from 2001 through 2003. It was a rough-tides time for Sega, which had made the difficult decision to exit the console market altogether, but Sato played a vital role in providing the leadership glue that held things together.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Sega is viewed as one of the foremost software-side gaming giants in the world, but decades ago, it was, of course, cranking things out nonstop on the hardware side. I grew up with a hand-me-down Sega Genesis, and I&#8217;ve always been a tad envious of kids who had a Sega Saturn, as well. I went into the Saturn scene as a young adult, and damn, what a wonderful machine it was.<\/p>\n<p>All of this is to say, Hideko Sato&#8217;s contributions to my life are keenly felt. And I bet there are millions out there who feel them all the more closely. Take a moment to read <a href=\"https:\/\/note.com\/beep21\/n\/neef436e544ee?app_launch=false\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Beep21&#8217;s article<\/a> if you can (I recommend DeepL over Google Translate if you aren&#8217;t a Japanese speaker). Let&#8217;s all celebrate the great things that Sato helped to bring to the gaming industry. Forever indebted, Sato-san.<\/p>\n<p>        <img width=\"440\" height=\"364\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1348 Ex Voto protagonist in front of a lesbian pride flag wave.\" data-img-url=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1348-ex-voto-protagonist-in-front-of-a-lesbian-pride-flag-wave.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1348-ex-voto-protagonist-in-front-of-a-lesbian-pride-flag-wave.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                    Next<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegamer.com\/1348-ex-voto-teaser-jennifer-english-lgbtq-stories\/\" title=\"Jennifer English Says She Wants To &quot;Passionately Tell LGBTQ+ Stories&quot; In New 1348 Ex Voto Teaser\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tJennifer English Says She Wants To &#8220;Passionately Tell LGBTQ+ Stories&#8221; In New 1348 Ex Voto Teaser<br \/>\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"display-card-excerpt\">&#8220;It&#8217;s not your usual fare. I&#8217;ve not seen that very often in games or just in media in general.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s a sad day for the gaming industry no matter how you look at it, but if you&#8217;re&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-476380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}