Sega Confirms Trademark for 'Potential Future Use' of Dreamcast

December 13th, 2007, 22:43 Posted By: JKKDARK

via GameDaily

Last week, a newly updated Dreamcast trademark sparked rumors across the Internet that Sega might be looking at possibly creating a Dreamcast 2. At the time, Sega of America PR Director Charlie Scibetta immediately told GameDaily BIZ that Sega "has no plans to get back into the console business."

Today we received a new statement that explains in part why Sega actually updated the trademark. "SEGA has no plans to get back into the hardware business, but we also want to protect our past and current brands. The trademark application was filed to protect our current and potential future use of the word DREAMCAST and to prevent other parties from using it in a way that could be confused or linked with SEGA," Scibetta said.

While Sega has made no explicit comments regarding further digital distribution of Dreamcast titles, certain Dreamcast games have already appeared on GameTap, and from a business standpoint it would seem to make sense to make select Dreamcast classics available on services like Xbox Live or PlayStation Network. Protecting the trademark "for potential future use" leaves that door open as a possibility for the future.

That said, some of Sega's big properties saw previous releases on the Dreamcast, and when Sega releases a new game in the same franchise on the current consoles, the trademark simply protects their reference to an old Dreamcast version as well. We highly doubt Sega will ever launch another console, but digital distribution of Dreamcast games does seem like an attractive avenue.

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