The Japanese Game Dev Company SEGA Shifts QA Team from London to Sofia

The European division of the Japanese game developer Sega announced that it is relocating its quality assurance team from London to Sofia, Gamesindustry.biz reported. The move will take place over a two-year period, with the new Sega Development Services Sofia launching in June 2020.

“Bulgaria is a European leader for IT development, home to regional offices for some of the most renowned tech outfits in the world including IBM and Hewlett-Packard and has a history of technological accomplishment and innovation. It’s the perfect location to open what will become a best-in-class quality assurance operation with the capacity to expand,” the president of Sega Europe Gary Dale said in a statement.

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Sega Corporation is a software and hardware company created in 1940 in the United States, but now based in Japan.

While providing games for military bases, the company was called Standard Games, but, following a move to Japan in 1952, the company was renamed Service Games of Japan. In the early 1980s, Sega released its first console system, the SG-1000, which generated more than $200 million in revenue. Over the next few years Sega released more consoles beginning a serious competition with its main rival, the Nintendo console, for control over the video game market.

New companies entering the competition and poor sales caused Sega to abandon console development entirely in 2001. Sega has since focused on software design and worked as a third-party game developer for its most successful franchises, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, and Virtua Fighter.