Hideki Sato, the designer behind virtually every Sega console, and the company’s former president, has died age 77.
Japanese games outlet Beep21 reports that Sato passed away this weekend.
Sato and his R&D team were responsible for the creation of Sega’s arcade and home console hardware, including the Master System, Genesis / Mega Drive, Saturn, and Dreamcast.
The engineer joined Sega in 1971 and was the company’s acting president between 2001 and 2003. He left the company in 2008.
“From the beginning, Sega’s home console development has always been influenced by our arcade development,” Sato previously told Famitsu in an interview covering Sega’s history.
Beep21 had extensively interviewed Sato about his work at Sega, including as part of this in-depth roundtable series that debuted just a few months ago https://note.com/beep21/m/m15e6fd503a96 🇯🇵 most of their stuff's paywalled, but this long interview from 2021 is part of their free package 🇯🇵 — GSK | ALL CITY SLOP SHOP (ETA SOON) (@allcityslopshop.com) 2026-02-14T14:08:23.275Z
“Our first 8-bit machine was the SC-3000. This was a PC for beginner-level users. At that time, Sega only did arcade games, so this was our first challenge. We had no idea how many units we’d sell.”
Sato said of Mega Drive, Sega’s most successful console: “At that point, we decided to start developing a new home console. By then, arcade games were using 16-bit CPUs.
“Arcade development was something we were very invested in, so we were always using the most cutting-edge technology there. Naturally, it started us thinking: what if we used that technology in a home console?
“Two years after we started development, it was done: a 16-bit CPU home console, the Megadrive. The 68000 chip had also recently come down in price, so the timing was right.”
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