Sega Sports R&D: History and Key Facts

Sega Sports Research and Development (セガスポーツの研究開発, Segasupōtsu no kenkyū kaihatsu), or Sega Sports R&D, was a development division of the Japanese video game company Sega. It was previously known as Smilebit, one of nine semi-autonomous Sega studios established in 2000. Smilebit was previously known as R&D6 or AM6, which itself was mainly based on Sega PC. Smilebit was known for its sports simulation games, as well as Jet Set Radio. When Sega began developing games for other platforms, Smilebit developed Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta and GunValkyrie for Xbox. Smilebit was led by Shun Arai as president and Takayuki Kawagoe as director. Kawagoe became president of Smilebit in 2003.

During a re-organization, Sega's nine studios were consolidated into "four of five core operations", and the non-sports staff of Smilebit was merged into Amusement Vision. Smilebit became exclusively dedicated to sports titles, with the Virtua Striker series from Amusement Vision becoming attributed to Smilebit. When Sega and Sammy were merged into Sega Sammy Holdings, all of the studios merged back into Sega. Smilebit became Sega Sports R&D and developed more sport simulation games, as well as the first entry of the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series. Later, these games were later given to CS1 and CS2 designations, and Sega Sports R&D ceased to exist.

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