Sega Signs With Digital River For Online Distribution

Sega of America has announced that e-commerce company Digital River has signed a deal to manage the online sale and delivery of select Sega PC game titles. These games will be available for purchase from Sega's website, plus hundreds of online retail, content and portal sites in the Digital River oneNetwork online sales channel. Based on the e-commerce agreement, Digital River built and recently launched Sega's online store, featuring games such as Virtua Fighter, Eastside Hockey Manager 2005 and The House of the Dead. This move shows the increasing importance of digital delivery to the PC game retail market, as also evidenced by Electronic Arts' recent announcement of its digital game delivery system. Select Sega games, including The House of the Dead 2 and Virtua Squad 1 and 2, among others, also will be available for sale and download through Digital River's oneNetwork online sales channel. oneNetwork offers Digital River clients the opportunity to generate increased visibility and incremental sales for their products through indirect sales programs. "Online distribution presents growth opportunities for Sega and we are poised to bring leading-edge games into that channel," said Chris Olson, director of Web for Sega of America, Inc. "Digital River's oneNetwork will allow us to quickly and easily expose our games to a very large audience of consumers that shop on popular, high-traffic online retail sites."