Despite speculation that Activision might buy Creative Assembly, as the publisher had done with previous successful developers under its wing, the Japanese company Sega announced on 9 March 2005 that they had sealed an acquisition deal with Creative Assembly, purchasing all issued shares in the company. Sega explained that the acquisition was to strengthen Sega Europe's presence in the European and North American video game markets. All preceding titles in the "Total War" series had been exclusively computer games. By July 2005, Sega had acquired the publishing rights to "Rome: Total War" from Activision, and built on the brand strategy by releasing two expansion packs: ' in September 2005 and ' in September 2006. "Spartan: Total Warrior" was released in October 2005 on Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube, receiving a mixed reception from critics.