This article was originally published in Japanese on Nikkei Gaming, a digital media outlet and part of Nikkei Business Publications, a Nikkei Group company.

TOKYO -- Japanese gaming giant Sega is pushing a transmedia strategy to boost the global value of its blockbuster video game franchises, bringing them to movie houses, concert halls and stage productions while expanding merchandise sales.

Shuji Utsumi, who was appointed president and chief operating officer in 2024, is leading the initiative, which will leverage Sega's globally recognized franchises such as Sonic, Like a Dragon and Persona. All have significant untapped potential beyond games.

The Sonic films are already a success that Sega intends to build on as it also expands its licensing and other IP-related businesses.

We recently spoke with Utsumi about Sega's plans. Edited excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Sega has stepped up its global expansion since you became president. Why is a company that already has several globally popular titles placing renewed emphasis on going global?

Sega began as a company that developed and sold game consoles alongside its arcade business. Because of that history, consoles long sat at the heart of our consumer business, and our game development model was based on first building for the domestic market and then expanding overseas.

The old Sega had a deeply ingrained culture of moving outward from Japan to the rest of the world. The major shift in recent years has been to rethink that console-centric, Japan-focused orientation and transform ourselves into a company that launches its business globally and simultaneously across markets, including on PC platforms.

Q: Unlike industries built around exporting Japanese content, gaming is inherently a global business.

A large part of the reason is that video games have different origins from other forms of entertainment. For many years, much of Japan's entertainment industry (everything from music to anime) was built around a television-centered business model.

Video games developed differently. Nintendo, SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) and, in its day, Sega were all part of this. Going back even further, before home consoles emerged, Japanese companies were already opening up overseas markets through arcade games. In other words, from the earliest days of the video game industry, Japanese companies expanded globally as a matter of course.

So operating globally is nothing new in itself for a game company. The question is how we draw on that accumulated experience to respond to the realities of today's global market. Q: How do you intend to develop the transmedia strategy going forward?

What struck me anew when I returned to Sega, after spending time at other companies, was just how much affection Sega's IP commands around the world. In some cases, it is loved in the West and elsewhere even more strongly than in Japan, I feel.

When the 2020 film "Sonic the Hedgehog" was highly successful, I saw it as an ideal opportunity to push ahead with a transmedia strategy. In fact, Sonic's licensing business expanded substantially following the film's release.

New licensing partners began coming on board, and over the past three years we have expanded the transmedia strategy beyond Sonic -- with a strong response. Q: So the film's success gave fresh momentum to the transmedia strategy.

When I first became involved in the games industry, makers and users seemed to have a strong sense that games were simply one category of toys. But as companies worked to establish games as a form of entertainment in their own right, they grew into a mainstream cultural force on a par with music and film.

If we are going to build a games business that reflects that reality and those broader trends, it becomes important to consider how best to strengthen each IP's unique strengths and maximize the value they generate. I believe the transmedia strategy is one part of our effort to address that challenge.

Q: Lately, there seems to be a growing number of fans who love an IP without ever having played the game.

We are seeing more and more fans like that across all of our titles. The "Like a Dragon" series, for example, has performed extremely well in merchandising, with women accounting for 60% to 70% of buyers. They watch our YouTube channel or videos and streams by popular creators, become fans of the world, story and characters of "Like a Dragon," and in many cases have never played the games themselves.

We regard people who love our products as fans -- and even as "gamers" -- whether or not they have actually played our games. One of the transmedia approach's strengths is that it multiplies the number of entry points and touch points through which people can discover and engage with an IP. In some cases, their level of engagement is even higher than that of fans who actually play the games.

Q: There are also significant differences in how men and women spend money on so-called oshikatsu or fan activities centered on a favorite idol or character.

It is not just a question of how they spend money on oshikatsu. I also feel that the way people develop and express affection for an IP or character differs. And that attachment to IP and characters is now spreading globally.

Merchandising itself is evolving along with it. Simultaneous worldwide releases have become the norm for games, and in step with that shift, we have increasingly come to launch merchandise around the world at the same time.

Once people become deeply involved in a particular culture, fans begin to exhibit similar behavior and lifestyles regardless of country or region. With hip-hop, that may show up in fashion; with K-pop, in makeup.

For anime and games, the center is Japan. And the characteristic fan behavior can be seen, for example, in the culture surrounding merchandise purchases and cosplay.

Culture has a profound influence on people, shaping even their lifestyles. The way I see it, Japan is now exporting to the world not just entertainment itself, but an entertainment culture that includes the patterns of behavior that have grown up around it.

Q: Because games and anime present a clearly defined story and world, their influence would seem to extend particularly far.

I think that is certainly true. If, for example, an anime in which the characters eat ramen with obvious relish becomes a hit, fans will want to eat ramen themselves. In the past, however, the overseas fans whose behavior was influenced in that way tended to be only the most hard-core enthusiasts. Today, that influence reaches a much broader and more casual audience.

That is one reason Sega describes its multilayered development of IP as a transmedia strategy. In merchandising as well, we need to take a more flexible view of our engagement with fans and consumers. If, for instance, an overseas fan takes an interest in a scene in "Like a Dragon" in which someone eats a bowl of gyudon beef, then even gyudon can become part of the merchandising opportunity. That, I think, is what merchandising means today. Aya Hirano is Editor-in-Chief of Nikkei Gaming and Munehiko Inagaki is a contributing writer.