David Rosen, the American businessman who co-founded Sega and helped shape its early direction in arcades and home consoles, has died at the age of 95. Rosen passed away on Christmas Day at his home in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, according to reports from RePlay magazine. His career spanned several decades and intersected with some of the most formative years in the global video game industry.
Rosen’s path to Sega began far from gaming. After serving as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, he remained in Japan at a time when the country was rebuilding its economy and infrastructure. He initially found business opportunities importing photo booths from the United States, responding to growing demand for identification photos. From there, his interests expanded into pinball machines and other coin-operated entertainment devices, placing him at the edge of Japan’s emerging amusement industry.
That work brought Rosen into contact with Nihon Goraku Bussan, a company involved in importing coin-operated machines whose Service Games division would later be shortened to Sega. The partnership marked the foundation of what would become one of the most influential names in arcade entertainment. During its early years, Sega focused primarily on arcade machines, building a reputation for technically ambitious and commercially successful titles that appealed to a broad audience.
By the 1980s, Rosen had returned to the United States and turned his attention to the growing home console market. Sega’s early efforts outside Japan were uneven, but the launch of the Master System in 1986 gained traction, particularly in Europe and South America. Rosen recognized that Sega’s strength lay in games that appealed to older players, including action-oriented titles such as Golden Axe and Shinobi, which contrasted with the more family-focused image cultivated by Nintendo at the time.
This strategic insight helped shape the development and positioning of the Mega Drive, known as the Genesis in North America. Released between 1988 and 1990 across different regions, the console established Sega as a major competitor in the home gaming market and marked the company’s most commercially successful hardware era. Its sharper branding and more aggressive marketing reflected a deliberate effort to differentiate Sega from its rivals.
Rosen remained with Sega until 1996, stepping away before the launch of the Dreamcast. Although that console was critically well regarded, its commercial struggles eventually led Sega to exit the hardware business and focus exclusively on software development. By then, Rosen’s influence had already been felt across multiple generations of arcade and console gaming.
While Sega would continue to evolve after his departure, Rosen’s role in guiding the company through its formative decades remains central to its history. His career reflects the intersection of postwar entrepreneurship, global entertainment, and the rise of video games as a mainstream industry.
