Amusement Vision (Ohga Shrugs)

Amusement Vision is one of Sega's first-party developers. They are known for their creation of the Super Monkey Ball series and the Yakuza series.

History
Amusement Vision has its origins in Sega AM4, one of Sega's main studios throughout the 1990's. During that time, the studio developed few games of note. However, when Sega changed their internal structure to meet their new needs as a primarily home-console based compnay as opposed to an arcade company, the studio was recreated as Amusement Vision.

Headed by Toshihiro Nagoshi, a longtime Sega veteran who helped develop games such as Virtua Racing and Daytona USA, Amusement Vision quickly became one of Sega's more prolific studios. In the early 2000's, their games included two Super Monkey Ball games, launching a new successful franchise for Sega; several Virtua sports games; and Planet Harriers, an entry in the long-forgotten Space Harrier series.

When Sega shifted gears yet again circa 2004, in preparation for the upcoming seventh console generation, Amusement Vision shifted gears and created a new series called Yakuza. Yakuza was an open-world action adventure series, and was critically very well received in Japan. Starting on the Dreamcast in 2005, Yakuza series games would become regular minor hits for Sega, selling between half a million and a million copies in Japan alone. In the meantime, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz was also developed for the Pluto.

Since the release of the Pluto, several Yakuza games have been released. The latest, the fifth main entry in the series, was a launch title for the Eclipse in Japan. It is due for an American release later in 2013.