Sociedade Anônima | |
Traded as | BM&F Bovespa: TOYB4 |
Industry | Toys, Video games, Electronics |
Founded | 1987 |
Headquarters | São Paulo, Brazil |
Key people
|
Fernando Fischer Pereira, (CEO) |
Products | Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, Saturn, Dreamcast, Zeebo |
Revenue | US$ 69.0 million (2012) |
- US$ 5.0 million (2012) | |
Website | www.tectoy.com.br |
Tectoy (known as Tec Toy before late 2007) is a Brazilian video game and electronics company. They are best known for producing, publishing and distributing Sega's consoles and video games in Brazil. The company stock is also traded at Bovespa. The company is headquartered in São Paulo.
Tectoy was founded in 1987 by a group of former Sharp engineers led by Daniel Dazcal, with the purpose of making electronic toys, a niche that other Brazilian toy manufacturers had failed to notice. They quickly struck a deal to become the exclusive representative of Japanese video game giant Sega Enterprises Ltd.. Consequently, their first product was the Zillion infrared toy gun. In the coming years, they would release all of Sega's game consoles, from the Master System to the Dreamcast. Their success in the gaming field was so notable that toys became a minor part of their business.
With Tectoy, Sega had a huge advantage over rival Nintendo in the Brazilian market; although there were countless Nintendo Entertainment System clones there, Nintendo had no official products until 1993. The Master System was a massive success there, and Tectoy even made some game versions not released anywhere else. Tectoy would also release the Mega Drive/Genesis that surpassed the SNES in market share in Brazil. In the 1990s, Tectoy had 80% of the official Brazilian market.
In the 1990s, Tectoy translated several games to Portuguese, which was rare at the time. Translated games include the first three Phantasy Star games, Shining in the Darkness, and Riven, the last of which also incorporated dubbed voices.