Hisao Oguchi


Hisao Oguchi is a Japanese business executive. He is the director, vice chairman, and chief creative officer of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. Oguchi originally was President and CEO of Sega.

Career

Game development

Hisao Oguchi graduated with a degree in engineering and joined Sega the following year in 1984 as a planner, with his very first work being Doki Doki Penguin Land for the SG-1000. Oguchi also was then responsible for Super Monaco GP and contributed to the medal game area with games such as Royal Ascot and Bingo Party. In 1990 he helmed Sega AM3, which became Hitmaker in 2000. During this period he managed a group of 5 producers and 9 directors. He produced dozens of arcade titles including sports games, rail shooters, puzzle games, driving games, and fighting games. He commented on this spread of genres: "AM3 doesn't have any specialist genre. Our first goal is to do whatever looks interesting." One of his producers was Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who spun off separate development teams after the first Sega Rally game. He also developed the pair of arcade games, Derby Owners Club and World Club Champion Football which drove industry development and profitability in Japanese arcades with their card and satellite systems. At Hitmaker, he also gave the greenlight to Segagaga. His career as a developer ended when he was promoted to company President and CEO in part of Sega's consolidation of in-house studios in 2003.

Executive

As president he was tasked to bring back the company into profitability together with Hideki Sato, who was shunned into vice chairman. During this period he was also approached by Hajime Satomi, president of Sammy Corporation about a potential merger. When Sega and Sammy merged to form Sega Sammy Holdings, he had various executive positions at the Sega Sammy group. Most recently he has helmed the casino initiative of Sega Sammy.