This globalization has been key to Sega's success in recent years. Not only is the company looking to the Western markets, but it's trying to create games that resonate worldwide. "We really are all about globalizing Sega at the moment. We feel that most Japanese companies still feel very Japanese and most American companies still feel very American and most European companies still feel very European. And we really are making a very concerted effort to globalize Sega and even taking – going back to Sonic, our mascot character I guess – efforts like the BioWare Sonic RPG on DS is an attempt to contemporize and Westernize Sonic as an IP as well," Jeffery explained.

We theorized that it might actually be easier for a Japanese company like Sega to globalize itself, going from Japan outward, rather than a big Western publisher like an EA or Activision to crack the Japanese or Asian markets. Jeffery didn't quite agree though.

"I think it goes both ways, actually. ... I think over the last couple years we've seen that most Japanese publishers have got one or two franchises that work really well in the West, but most of the content they're building in the Japanese market isn't so relevant anymore because Western video game development has accelerated so much in the last decade that a lot of the huge, massive hits – the Halos and Mass Effects and products like that – are built in the West for Western gaming audiences," he said. "And the Japanese market again with the recent success of the Wii and DS seems to be going off on its own tangent from the rest of the world, so a lot of the content being built in Japan specifically for the Japanese market just really struggles to translate to the West."

So what's the next step for Mario and Sonic, or for the burgeoning friendship between Nintendo and Sega? "We still have this great relationship and if anything, it's been solidified and cemented by the success of Mario & Sonic. For both parties it reaffirms what we've been talking about for years, which is that collaboration would be a great, great thing. So we want to see how [the game] does throughout the rest of the year and through the Olympics timeframe in the summer. We really want it to be one of the biggest selling games of 2008."

Jeffery also confirmed that Sega will have another marketing push around the Olympics to help boost sales of the game again. "We will be marketing the game very heavily throughout the summer and throughout the Olympics time period," he said.

We asked Jeffery if Sega has a global sales target for the title in 2008, but he carefully answered, "Not that we're allowed to talk about. It will be another round number."

We'll be bringing you more from our Simon Jeffery interview later today. His comments on the Wii business were particularly interesting. [The rest of the interview is now available in this story.]