Sega's own listing dates the first Miku game to July 2009

The persona

Hatsune Miku appears here not as a music-software product or an advertising face but as a licensed video-game character. Sega's own product page, archived in July 2009, names the release Hatsune Miku -Project DIVA-, built for Sony's PlayStation Portable and published under Sega's home-console games division, distinct from Sega's arcade business. The page presents Miku inside a rhythm-game format, with playable songs and a listed release date, rather than any narrative about the character's own ambitions; the game is Sega's product, using a character licensed from its Japanese owner.

What the documents establish

Sega's archived page states a release date of 2 July 2009 for the PSP title, with a listed retail price, fixing a specific date on the first entry in what became a long-running rhythm-game franchise. Crypton Future Media's own About Hatsune Miku page, separately, lists 'corporate collaborations with SEGA, Toyota USA, Google and more' among the relationships that followed, corroborating from the licensor's side that Sega held an authorized arrangement rather than an unlicensed use. Together, the two documents establish a licensing chain: Crypton as owner and licensor, Sega as a separate publisher building a distinct product under that license, with neither document stating financial terms.

Character versus company

Sega's product page speaks entirely in the register of a publisher marketing a game: a title, a platform, a price and a release date, with no material presented as Miku's own commentary on being turned into a playable character. That separation matters because Project DIVA is often folded into a general narrative of 'Miku becoming famous,' when the primary record shows a more specific, contractual event: a music-technology company licensing a design to a separate entertainment company for a product line. Sega, not Miku, decided the game's format, price and release window; Crypton, not Miku, is the party whose own materials describe the licensing relationship publicly.

What to watch

Sega's page is a dated product listing rather than a living document, but this entry could not locate a Sega-published statement disclosing licensing terms, royalties or sales figures for the release, so none is claimed here. Crypton's list of collaborations is undated and retrospective, reflecting the company's self-description as retrieved on 16 September 2026, and should not be read as fixing when the Sega relationship began beyond what Sega's own 2009 page confirms. A reader tracking the franchise's business history should look for a Sega-side statement on unit sales, which this drafting pass did not find.

• What licensing fee or royalty structure, if any, did Crypton and Sega publicly disclose for the Project DIVA franchise?
• How many PSP units of the original Project DIVA did Sega report selling, if it ever disclosed a figure?
• Did Sega's arcade division, a separate unit from its home-console games division, operate under the same or a different licensing arrangement?

The verifiable core of this record is dated: Sega's own PSP product page fixes 2 July 2009 as the release date for the first Project DIVA game, built under a license Crypton's own materials separately confirm existed, without either side's public documents disclosing the commercial terms behind it.