Toshihiro Nagoshi joined Sega in 1989 as a designer. As Sega began developing 3D games such as Virtua Racing, he was able to apply his knowledge of film in choosing the right camera angles in three dimensional spaces, something that the other team members had no experience with. Nagoshi became producer, director and chief designer of Daytona USA, which became one of the most successful arcade games of all time. Next he worked on another racing game, Scud Race, which, while successful, did not make as much money as Daytona USA. Nagoshi felt pressure to constantly deliver racing games as he became known for the genre in the company. He developed SpikeOut, which he described as a "personal rebellion" as it was a character based action game where players could play for a long time with just one credit, though profits for arcade operators suffered. Nagoshi requested his own development division during the development of Shenmue. In what has been called "a brief moment of remarkable creativity", in 2000, Sega restructured its arcade and console development teams into nine semi-autonomous studios headed by the company's top creators. In 2000, Toshihiro Nagoshi was the president of AV (Amusement Vision). Nagoshi chose the name because he was fond of the term 'vision', and amusement was the core market of the studio. AV refers to Adult Video in Japan, however Nagoshi thinks with all adult videos being streamed in the future, people will instead think of amusement video when they see AV. Speaking about initial plans for AV, Nagoshi wanted to make original titles in addition to sequels. He also was not fond of doing ports of arcade titles, believing console and arcade titles should be developed separately and in mind for their target market. Of the nine studios that Sega established, AV was the smallest, with about 50 employees. Nagoshi devised the concept of rolling spheres through mazes based on his desire to create a game that was instantly possible to understand and play, as a contrast to increasingly complex games at Japanese arcades at the time. Another desire for developing the game was to prove that games can be successful without a huge budget, which was a particular complaint from Sega's CEO at the time. AV developed it initially as an arcade title, Monkey Ball. Monkey Ball was first released in Japanese arcades in June 2001, and then received an upgraded version — Super Monkey Ball — as a GameCube launch title in all regions. After the success of the first Super Monkey Ball, it spawned a direct sequel on the GameCube. Following that, a collaboration with Nintendo happened. AV would develop F-Zero GX in a contracted development, while Nintendo would be responsible for the supervision, production and publishing of their IP. In the end, Nintendo was impressed with the product, considering it a step forward for the F-Zero franchise. Amusement Vision consistently produced high selling titles and was profitable every year. Nagoshi was promoted within Sega along with Yuji Naka and Hisao Oguchi who also ran profitable studios in the form of Naka's Sonic Team and Oguchi's Hitmaker. When Oguchi became company president in 2003, he announced his intention to consolidate Sega's studios into "four or five core operations". As part of the consolidation, the non-sports staff of Smilebit, developers of games like Jet Set Radio Future and Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox, were absorbed by Amusement Vision. Smilebit was considered to be less commercially successful than AV and also focused more on the console market, but had high technical skills. Nagoshi had to think about how to use everyone's skill to the best of their ability. When the idea of a game portraying the Japanese underworld came about from Nagoshi, Masayoshi Kikuchi who previously worked on the Jet Set Radio series at Smilebit, agreed to the concept. Coincidentally he was watching yakuza type movies and also had a desire to turn that type of atmosphere into a game. By 2004, AV had about 124 employees. During 2004, Sammy Corporation bought a controlling share in Sega and created the new company Sega Sammy Holdings, an entertainment conglomerate. Since then, Sega and Sammy became subsidiaries of the aforementioned holding company, with both companies operating independently, while the executive departments merged. Prior to the acquisition by Sammy, Sega began the process of re-integrating its subsidiaries into the main company, which was completed by October 2004. Sega would also restructure the development studios again, consolidating the divisions further into the Global Entertainment, Amusement Software, and New Entertainment R&D divisions.