WD Trivia/Storytime Thread

[vicireland]

the thing that makes the least sense to me is how he was hired on by Sega to save the Saturn, publicly killed the system, and somehow wound up spearheading Dreamcast development in some major capacity making all kinds of promises that never materialized for a bunch of Japan related reasons. Then the guy had a really bad habit of doing stuff behind the backs of his superiors like stealing dev tools for the Saturn Sonic game and having a 56.6k modem on the Dreamcast which made certain people at SoJ apoplectic.

Then there's the rumor he made a pretty inflammatory comment to a drunk Japanese Sega executive saying Americans are too stupid to remember 9/9/99.

Its a wonder how that guy could even find work at all with some of the crap he's pulled.

I can tell you why he killed the Saturn. Hubris. He didn't want to be involved with a "losing" platform, even though the replacement was not close to ready. so he just killed it and as a direct result, drowned SEGA of America in a river of red that would put Moses himself to shame. By the time the Dreamcast hit, they were in such bad financial and organizational shape with terrible retailer relations to boot that the DC was functionally DoA - they didn't have the economic engine to push past the resistance to get to the success it deserved.

[sweetsweetfugu]

Nah. Twas sheer ineptitude that killed that beast.

edit: actually, the really ironic thing is, the moment Stolar left Sony to work for Sega is when the Playstation began to take off in popularity.

double edit: its weird to hear the 'nothing personal' line in that interview in regards to Stolar. From what I remember, there was a major shake up between Working Designs and Sega at E3 in '97 and the main culprit was Stolar who had intentionally screwed them over on show space. But that, of course, was before he completely screwed up everything for everybody so IDK, maybe the feelings went from 'he was a jerk' to 'ok, not really a jerk, just really dumb'

kinda half wished the topic were about Dave Halverson instead. Nothing. And I mean NOTHING is as riveting as reading about a dude who is so sleazy, he made sure to deposit his check before any of his other employees so he knew his check wouldn't be the one that bounced. That or writing a review for Cybermorph completely high due to one of his employees spiking the office coffee with LSD... OR having underage kids playing Yoshi's Island in the same hotel room with hookers and drugs.

[vicireland]

Nah. Twas sheer ineptitude that killed that beast.

edit: actually, the really ironic thing is, the moment Stolar left Sony to work for Sega is when the Playstation began to take off in popularity.

double edit: its weird to hear the 'nothing personal' line in that interview in regards to Stolar. From what I remember, there was a major shake up between Working Designs and Sega at E3 in '97 and the main culprit was Stolar who had intentionally screwed them over on show space. But that, of course, was before he completely screwed up everything for everybody so IDK, maybe the feelings went from 'he was a jerk' to 'ok, not really a jerk, just really dumb'

It was NOT a coincidence that PlayStation took off when Bernie was out of Sony. Many of his idiotic policies (no jRPGs) were the very things holding the platform and the great employees under him back. It was seriously a "ding dong the witch is dead" moment when he was out, and Sony dealt SEGA a mortal wound by gifting him to them.

Yeah, it's probably a perspective thing. I have come to believe that he was in way over his head and was completely without the skill set to understand games, let alone craft the future of gaming. So yeah, I probably just think he's dumb. But he's not the first dumb CEO to fall up the corporate ladder. But whoo, doggie. Around the Albert Odyssey / E3 booth cancellation thing I was super-pissed at him. He did a bunch of other stuff, but it pales compared to those.

[Gypsy]

I can tell you why he killed the Saturn. Hubris. He didn't want to be involved with a "losing" platform, even though the replacement was not close to ready. so he just killed it and as a direct result, drowned SEGA of America in a river of red that would put Moses himself to shame. By the time the Dreamcast hit, they were in such bad financial and organizational shape with terrible retailer relations to boot that the DC was functionally DoA - they didn't have the economic engine to push past the resistance to get to the success it deserved.

Yeah I don't think the Dreamcast would have survived piracy anyway, but this certainly didn't help and it shortened the life span. It definitely sucks though, the Dreamcast was a really neat system from the VMUs to the online functions.

It was NOT a coincidence that PlayStation took off when Bernie was out of Sony. Many of his idiotic policies (no jRPGs) were the very things holding the platform and the great employees under him back. It was seriously a "ding dong the witch is dead" moment when he was out, and Sony dealt SEGA a mortal wound by gifting him to them.

This one in particular just seems beyond idiotic to me. At the time gaming as a whole was still relatively niche so why block a genre that proved to be very successful.

Also just lol at the thought of one company sending another an idiotic employee that eventually led to their demise.

[sweetsweetfugu]

Yeah I don't think the Dreamcast would have survived piracy anyway, but this certainly didn't help and it shortened the life span. It definitely sucks though, the Dreamcast was a really neat system from the VMUs to the online functions.

This one in particular just seems beyond idiotic to me. At the time gaming as a whole was still relatively niche so why block a genre that proved to be very successful.
Also just lol at the thought of one company sending another an idiotic employee that eventually led to their demise.

both these things are weird for a variety of reasons. While Stolar was running SCEA, the people running SoA were trying to gain a competitive edge like dropping the price on the Saturn. SoJ absolutely refused. Basically the two sides switched, so when the former Sega dudes were hired on to manage the Playstation they basically were allowed to do what they couldn't for the Saturn. Like drop the price. Just a difference of $50, opening the floodgates on releases, and hyping the crap out of a few games (like FFVII ironically enough) really helped the PS to beat the snot out of the Saturn. Conversely, when Stolar was head of SCEA, he intentionally held back and staggered releases early on. I don't remember the logic exactly, but it was pretty lame reasoning whatever it was.

The Saturn was also popular and somewhat successful in Japan. Way more than the Dreamcast. Its not common knowledge, but the Dreamcast failed to gain traction in Japan at all. They practically couldn't give the damn thing away. I vaguely remember something about Sega's stock value turning to junk on the Nekkei, and I think that's what scared the Japanese away from buying it. Its hard not to feel Stolar was responsible for part of that. Sega spent an entire year with nothing between the Saturn and DC.

[zborgerd]

It's dejavu because we had these same discussions countless times in the old WD forums ~15 years ago.

SEGA machines post-Genesis were always a lost cause due to heavy competition and poor consumer opinion of the SEGA brand after failed attempts to peddle numerous costly upgrades. SEGA was always a hardware company, first and foremost, due to their strong arcade lineage, and this was a problem for consumers where the value and longevity of a platform is important.

I think that it could be said that no SEGA system has ever really taken off in Japan. The Saturn was stable, but that's even pushing it. Between the Famicom(s) and PCE domination, SEGA was always in third place in Japan. The Genesis was a success in the west due to its massive third party library, but the Saturn never really had the game library to compete, and it certainly couldn't compete on price. We were mysteriously missing the vast majority of the Saturn's exceptional arcade ports, which were huge at the time in the east and the west. For instance, Capcom CPS2 ports that came a year earlier on the Saturn and didn't have the deficiencies of the PS1 release as long as the memory expansion was utilized.

Keep in mind that the Saturn only had a short 4-year run in Japan before the release of the Dreamcast. It's hard to say it was successful. It's probably safer to say that it was stable enough and had an exceptional library of games, but it was short-lived due to mounting pressure to push resources into development of the Dreamcast. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; Dreamcast is one of my favorite game systems and I'm not a "SEGA fan" by any stretch of the imagination (I just started playing my second-hand Genesis for the first time ever recently after having it for 15 years), but SEGA has always suffered from half-hearted marketing efforts ans localization bungles. They did it as a hardware company and they are still doing it today as a publisher.

Some people don't accept it but the Saturn was simply a lost cause. The Saturn is a great game system and the Dreamcast is brilliant, but SoJ and SoA are probably equally to blame for their missteps. How often are we playing SEGA-published games and actually being impressed by them since they became a sole software company? I have a few decent Wii/360/DS games that SEGA published (Bayonetta, Vanquish, HoTD:Overkill, Infinite Space); Coincidentally none of which were created in-house. But I can probably count my post-Dreamcast SEGA game collection on one hand. Maybe two if you want to count SEGA-developed Nintendo games like F-Zero GX.

[Tsukoblue]

I can tell you why he killed the Saturn. Hubris. He didn't want to be involved with a "losing" platform, even though the replacement was not close to ready. so he just killed it and as a direct result, drowned SEGA of America in a river of red that would put Moses himself to shame. By the time the Dreamcast hit, they were in such bad financial and organizational shape with terrible retailer relations to boot that the DC was functionally DoA - they didn't have the economic engine to push past the resistance to get to the success it deserved.

At least that guy didn't unleash a second locust swarm upon the world

[Tsukoblue]

It was NOT a coincidence that PlayStation took off when Bernie was out of Sony. Many of his idiotic policies (no jRPGs) were the very things holding the platform and the great employees under him back. It was seriously a "ding dong the witch is dead" moment when he was out, and Sony dealt SEGA a mortal wound by gifting him to them.

Yeah, it's probably a perspective thing. I have come to believe that he was in way over his head and was completely without the skill set to understand games, let alone craft the future of gaming. So yeah, I probably just think he's dumb. But he's not the first dumb CEO to fall up the corporate ladder. But whoo, doggie. Around the Albert Odyssey / E3 booth cancellation thing I was super-pissed at him. He did a bunch of other stuff, but it pales compared to those.

I never could figure out where he got that rpgs are destined to fail thought in his head

[storino03]

It's easier to look back and see how different decisions would have resulted in a possible resurgence of sales. Back then, RPGs were not system sellers?

[Gypsy]

How often are we playing SEGA-published games and actually being impressed by them since they became a sole software company? I have a few decent Wii/360/DS games that SEGA published (Bayonetta, Vanquish, HoTD:Overkill, Infinite Space); Coincidentally none of which were created in-house. But I can probably count my post-Dreamcast SEGA game collection on one hand. Maybe two if you want to count SEGA-developed Nintendo games like F-Zero GX.

Nights: Journey of Dreams, Valkyria Chronicles series, Yakuza series, PSU, Blood Will Tell are some good games you forgot.

Hopefully Shining Resonance.

Still as a total portion of my gaming, it's been very small.

It's easier to look back and see how different decisions would have resulted in a possible resurgence of sales. Back then, RPGs were not system sellers?

Hindsight is one thing. Blocking an entire genre for no reason? That's kind of silly.