Sega Chairman Dies of Heart Failure

Mr. Okawa established CSK, a business software and service company, in 1968. He acquired Sega Enterprises in 1984 and helped turn it into one of the largest videogame companies in the world. In 1998, Okawa donated $27 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish the Okawa Center for Future Children, to help "transform the ways children live, learn, and play in the digital age". The donation was one of the largest in MIT's history, and was believed to be the largest gift ever by a Japanese individual to a foreign institution. Okawa became Sega's president last summer, when Shoichiro Irimajiri stepped down to take responsibility for poor Dreamcast sales. Just last January, Okawa said that he would help prop up the sagging company with $730 million of his own money. Sega did not provide details about survivors or funeral arrangements, but did say that the company will have a memorial service.