The Sega Channel, cable’s first on-demand videogame service, is pulling the plug June 30 and closing its main headquarters in New York by year’s end.
The channel, which launched in 1994, has been a joint venture of Time Warner Entertainment, Tele-Communications Inc. and Sega of America. It enabled subscribers paying $12.95 and $14.95 per month to play a rotating menu of videogames 24 hours a day.
But the Sega Channel’s future was imperiled by its being based on a 16-bit Sega Genesis game platform that had been supplanted by the 32-bit and 64-bit platforms that had become the standard of the industry.
Channel has been available in 20 million cable homes, but was purchased by just 150,000 subscribers.