With its recent acquisition of Amplitude Studios, Sega is primed to become a leading publisher of stellar strategy games.

You know what? After the fall of the Dreamcast (peace be upon it) we all assumed that Sega was going down the drain, but damn if it hasn’t recreated itself as one of the most influential publishers in the world. The fact that Sega is now publishing Atlus games is awesome, and apparently it’s been making some other acquisitions as well, including the recent purchase of Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios.

In addition to Endless Space, Amplitude also developed Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless. These are all “4X” strategy games in the vein of Master of Orion. We typically don’t think of Sega as a publisher or developer of strategy games, but we should probably get used to that idea. Sega, don’t forget, also owns Creative Assembly and Relic Entertainment. In a statement (via Eurogamer), Amplitude Studios co-founder Mathieu Girard had this to say: “Joining the SEGA family represents the culmination of five years of hard work from myself and Romain and everyone here at Amplitude Studios. For the Endless series to be alongside PC franchises with such heritage as Total War and Dawn of War in the SEGA Europe stable puts our games where we feel they deserve to be.”

Could we be seeing the return of Sega as a household name and video game powerhouse? Everyone still recognizes Sonic, but Sonic games have been going down the drain lately. Sonic Boom has pissed off every seasoned Sega fan in the world. Even so, we long for a return of Sega to the realm of hardware manufacturing; we long for the return of the glory days of Sonic Adventure; we long to hold Sega in very high esteem once again. It seems they’re making some smart decisions and adding some mighty arrows to their quiver.