or Sega Sports R&D is a defunct development division of the Japanese video game company Sega. It was previously known as Smilebit, one of nine semi-autonomous studios which Sega established in 2000. Smilebit was previously known as R&D6 or AM6 which itself was mainly based on Sega PC. Smilebit was known for its sports simulation titles, as well as Jet Set Radio. When Sega started releasing games for other platforms, Smilebit began developing games for the Xbox, with Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta and GunValkyrie. Smilebit was led by Shun Arai as president and Takayuki Kawagoe as director. Kawagoe became president of Smilebit in 2003. During a re-organization, Sega's nine studios were consolidated into "four of five core operations", and the non-sports staff of Smilebit was merged into Amusement Vision. Smilebit became exclusively dedicated to sports titles, with the Virtua Striker series from Amusement Vision becoming attributed to Smilebit. When Sega and Sammy were merged into Sega Sammy Holdings, all of the studios merged back into Sega. Smilebit became Sega Sports R&D and developed more sport simulation games, as well as the first entry of the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series. Later, these games were later given to CS1 and CS2 designations, and Sega Sports R&D ceased to exist. History When Shun Arai joined Sega, he desired to develop a few online projects as Sega diversified into business ventures such as home banking. Arai was in charge of the Sega Saturn development tools and technical support. Based on this, Sega asked Arai to develop an online game when Smilebit was founded. That title was Hundred Swords which was developed for the Dreamcast. Smilebit as a name was chosen to bring happiness to its users and the digital term 'bit' gives it a more serious image. Smilebit had about 105 employees and six lines of development, with a third of the staff coming from Sega PC. Smilebit was known as the premiere studio for sports games. It developed the successful sports simulator series , and . Non-sports titles were developed as well. Jet Set Radio was developed by former developers of Panzer Dragoon Saga, who hoped to develop something completely new and unlike the Panzer Dragoon series. A sequel was developed for Xbox, called Jet Set Radio Future, or JSRF. The team got many commendations when they went overseas to events such E3; however, they realized