"The Sega Sony hardware system" - How Sega of America & Sony tried to team up

[handygrafx]

Saw this on another forum

“Sony came to us after they had been rebuffed by Nintendo,” remembers Kalinske.

 “They had wanted Nintendo to use some technology that they had, and Nintendo instead chose to work with Philips. That really annoyed Sony. Olaf Olafsson [Sony Electronic Publishing President] and Micky Schulhof [President of Sony America] came to my office and said: ‘Tom, we really don’t like Nintendo. You don’t like Nintendo. We have this little studio down in Santa Monica [Imagesoft] working on video games, we don’t know what to do with it, we’d like Sega’s help in training our guys. And we think the optical disc will be the best format.’

“Well I agreed with them, I thought CDs would be the next format as well. But in those days nobody knew how to programme on optical discs. So I said, “Ok. Let’s combine our efforts. Let’s finance Imagesoft, and let’s finance this little developer called Digital Pictures, which seemed to be furthest along in knowing how to programme on optical disc.’ And they financed three titles from Digital Pictures and we did as well.

 “So our relationship with Sony was very close and very tight. We together worked a lot of these things out. And Sega of America and Sony were both convinced that the next platform had to use optical discs. We had been working on this CD ROM attachment to the Genesis [Mega CD], which we knew really wasn’t adequate, but it taught us how to make games on this format.

“We had the Sony guys and our engineers in the United States come up with specs for what this next optical-based hardware system would be. And with these specs, Olafsson, Schulhof and I went to Japan, and we met with Sony’s Ken Kutaragi.

 “He said it was a great idea, and as we all lose money on hardware, let's jointly market a single system – the Sega Sony hardware system – and whatever loss we make, we split that loss.”

 Kalinske loved the sound of this deal. As Sega made some of the biggest games in the world, he was certain it would be Sega that would make the most money from this deal. All he needed was the Sega Board to say yes.

“Next we went to Nakayama [Sega President] and the Board at Sega, and they basically turned me down. They said: ‘That’s a stupid idea, Sony doesn’t know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this?’ That is what caused the division between Sega and Sony and caused Sony to become our competitor and launch its own hardware platform.”

This was the first of many disagreements between Sega Japan and its US team in the build-up to E3. In fact, Sega America had little faith in the Saturn and was desperate to improve it.

The whole MCV article here

[Tatsujin]

Yeah, saw this on another forum as well, and this was my answer there:

Oh read, two americans discussing their idea of a sega and sony joint venture. How exciting.

[SmaMan]

That whole Sony Imagesoft thing and Digital Pictures thing did happen though... not sure if it was in that way.

Remember Sewer Shark?

[jeffhlewis]

By all indications in what I've read, Sega of Japan pretty squarely is responsible for most of Sega's post-Genesis downward spiral. The board was completely short-sighted and way too conservative to survive in the market.

[SignOfZeta]

By all indications in what I've read, Sega of Japan pretty squarely is responsible for most of Sega's post-Genesis downward spiral. The board was completely short-sighted and way too conservative to survive in the market.

And by everything I've read Sega of America is to blame. The US was the biggest market, but SoA were also huge mooches. SoJ made the Saturn pull its weight in Japan, SoA went a full year without releasing a game for it. SoA is responsible (ie: to blame) for the 32X, not selling the 4MB Saturn RAM cart in the states, saddling the Sega CD with a reputation for idiotic FMV games, etc. SoA sucks. Always did.

SoJ's biggest mistake was letting SoA spend so much f*cking money on dumb shit.

This interviewee is an idiot, btw. Nobody knew how to program games on CD, eh? And this is *after* MegaCD, supposedly?

[xelement5x]

By all indications in what I've read, Sega of Japan pretty squarely is responsible for most of Sega's post-Genesis downward spiral. The board was completely short-sighted and way too conservative to survive in the market.

And by everything I've read Sega of America is to blame. The US was the biggest market, but SoA were also huge mooches. SoJ made the Saturn pull its weight in Japan, SoA went a full year without releasing a game for it. SoA is responsible (ie: to blame) for the 32X, not selling the 4MB Saturn RAM cart in the states, saddling the Sega CD with a reputation for idiotic FMV games, etc. SoA sucks. Always did.

SoJ's biggest mistake was letting SoA spend so much f*cking money on dumb shit.

This interviewee is an idiot, btw. Nobody knew how to program games on CD, eh? And this is *after* MegaCD, supposedly?

SOA did do quite well with the Genesis, you have to give them that.

[jeffhlewis]

By all indications in what I've read, Sega of Japan pretty squarely is responsible for most of Sega's post-Genesis downward spiral. The board was completely short-sighted and way too conservative to survive in the market.

And by everything I've read Sega of America is to blame. The US was the biggest market, but SoA were also huge mooches. SoJ made the Saturn pull its weight in Japan, SoA went a full year without releasing a game for it. SoA is responsible (ie: to blame) for the 32X, not selling the 4MB Saturn RAM cart in the states, saddling the Sega CD with a reputation for idiotic FMV games, etc. SoA sucks. Always did.

SoJ's biggest mistake was letting SoA spend so much f*cking money on dumb shit.

This interviewee is an idiot, btw. Nobody knew how to program games on CD, eh? And this is *after* MegaCD, supposedly?

If were talking about the 16-bit era - SOA spent a ton of money because they were the only ones delivering a profit to the company at the time - they earned it. SOJ got their panties in a bunch because two different SOA presidents were telling them how to run their business and it didn't fit their failed 1970's era model of sales/marketing. Without USA and Europe success, the MD would have died a quick death in Japan.

When you turn the page to the Saturn, yeah SOA was garbage during that generation. Starting with the botched Saturn launch and the jury-rigged 3D capability.

[SamIAm]

My take from reading various articles and interviews is that
a) the choice of all hardware used in the Saturn,
b) the early release of the Saturn in the US, and
c) the conception of the 32X as well as the insistence on it using dual SH-2s
were all things that came from SoJ and were forced on SoA.

Our accounts all come from SoA, so it's entirely possible that we're getting filtered facts. However, if the above is true, then I think it's fair to say that the blame for Sega's failure rests mostly with SoJ. Whatever other mistakes there were at whatever other times, I think it's primarily those three things which prevented Sega from getting the foothold they needed in the 32-bit generation, and that's what led to their bankruptcy.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the only real mistake of its own that SoA made when it was under Tom Kalinske was believing that FMV games would be the future, and investing likewise during Sega's most successful years. The money lost on other fruitless R&D and things like high executive salaries was perhaps unavoidable and probably less consequential.

And after Kalinske? Well, Bernie Stolar was a moron, but by the time he came in, the damage had been done. I mean, having Working Design's translation of Saturn Lunar 1 would have been nice, but it wasn't going to save the system. As far as westerners were concerned, the Saturn had no meaningful advantage over the Playstation in hardware or software, price or potential. The end.