Vice President of Sega, Shunichi Nakamura, issued a statement to the source of the past few days discussion The New York Times. Here in full is the letter.

Mr. Glenn Kraman

Business Desk, The New York Times

Mr. Howard French

Tokyo Bureau Chief, The New York Times Tokyo Bureau

While Sega has always been fond of The New York Times' objective coverage of our company, we would like to express our concern over the fallacy that appeared on 12/27/00 regarding Nintendo's buy out of Sega. Not only did this erroneous allegation cause the trade of Sega's corporate stock to be temporarily suspended while substantially influencing Sega and Nintendo's stock prices, it caused unnecessary confusion among stockholders, affiliated companies, business partners, and end-users of both companies. It also severely damaged Sega's corporate and brand image during a very precarious time in the videogame industry.

Although top executives of Sega and Nintendo flatly and completely denied the rumor, The New York Times has published yet another article containing similar content on 12/29/00. Such repeated and arbitrary publication of groundless statements is pure harassment and unacceptable obstruction of our business, which we cannot overlook. We believe that The New York Times as a news organization is heavily responsible for this misinformation.

Sega Corporation is requesting that The New York Times immediately run a notification and apology for the fallacious feature in the same scale and manner as the initial article. We expect The New York Times to address this issue in the honorable tradition of a respectable news source by taking the appropriate and responsible measures toward reparations.

Thank you,

Shunichi Nakamura

Corporate Executive Vice President

Sega Corporation of Japan

Make of it what you will, but the guy sounds pretty serious. Now as they say Mr. NY Times, the ball is in your court.