-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Peter Moore recounts how he almost got into some gangster shit with Yuji Naka
- Thread starter Rymuth
- Start date
hydrophilic attack
Member
I meant back when they were making hardware. I like some modern Sega games, like Valkyria Chronicles and Resonance of Fate
Thebullfrog
Member
Sounds like Sega alright. God the Japanese leadership at that place really do live in their own world. To this day, they still refuse to accept that things work differently outside Japan, Hell, outside their own echo chamber of a board room. It's sheer luck the company hasn't completely collapsed under the weight of their own xenophobia.
Gentleman Jack
Member
They were being compared to EA (Madden) and Rockstar (GTA3) directly. They were 'granddad' in as much as they were fading from memory in a year where GTAIII, MGS2, and Halo were taking over the mindshare of their most lucrative audience. Whether or not the teenagers they asked were mistaken about the actual content of Sega's output, Moore was attempting to illustrate that they had a huge perception problem on their hands.
Demoskinos
Member
No wonder the Saturn failed horribly. That sounds like a nightmare to deal with.
all these hot takes, let me get my oven mitts
Ban Puncher
Member
Neuromancer
Member
Haha that's amazing. Peter Moore is a legend.
CertifiedFP
Member
Yeah, well guess what.
This was a business meeting. There's not that many game developers out there who are particularly great at running a business, and a developer who flips out like that in the face of criticism clearly is not one of them.
And yes, Sega most definitely WAS like a granddad and a relic in 2002. You miss the part where the market largely shrugged at and ignored the Dreamcast, resulting in Sega dropping their console business? And their "unique and modern" games of that era flopped one after the other.
Consumers as a whole largely did not give a shit about Sega in 2002, and the survey Moore was trying to communicate to the Japanese branch clearly reflected that.
Peter has praised Phil, didn't think much of Mattrick though.
InaudibleWhispa
Member
Fantastic interview. His rise to the top at Sega must have been crazy. "They said "Sega has got a new console coming out. They're in a little bit of trouble. They've got no head of marketing and they are nine months from launch, they don't have anything. They have no creative, they have no designs, no brand ID, we're still even fighting over the name. And the Japanese are panicked". Then all of a sudden, Bernie leaves Sega, and they said to me, after five months on the job, "You're in charge. You're the new president, chief operating officer, of Sega America," and I'm still waiting for my clothes to arrive from Boston". From marketing to head of a sinking ship in 5 months.
TheGameshark
Member
Hahaha amazing
To the general audience Sega had been making trash since at least 1995. They were never the same after the Saturn launch debacle.
Moore saw things correctly, because videogames are a business. The notion that anyone would say what Naka said in that story seriously at that time is ludicrous. I was a diehard Sega fan going back to the '80s arcade days and even I knew the ship was sinking by 1998 or so. Sega hadn't been cool or relevant for years. The granddad comparison was exactly correct to the mainstream gaming audience at the time. Only Sega fans were even bothering to take note of what they were releasing by then.
Untrue, he left Sega in 2003. The Gamecube versions of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were out. Adventure DX was poorly received pretty much across the board, Adventure 2 Battle was more mixed/tepid admittedly.
And Billy Hatcher was close to finished, so Moore would have direct knowledge of how far out in the weeds Naka was at the time.
What The Forest Taught Me
Member
As someone who's worked both for and with large Japanese companies in Tokyo, I'd love to read your stories!
What The Forest Taught Me
Member
I've seen firsthand how Japanese companies will willfully make decisions not in their best interest because making the better decision would be an implicit admission they'd been wrong all along. Dead serious. I have a feeling Sho Nuff knows what I'm referring to!
Honor and shame are huge parts of japanese culture. I'm an expert.
UnemployedVillain
Member
You joke, but having worked with major Japanese clients, there is a bit of this to it. While lower down members might see the issues, the higher ups are usually reluctant to admit things are going badly until shit is pretty much right before hitting the fan
NightShift
Member
What a great story. Props to Peter Moore for sharing this, you're alright.
It's a joke based on that old meme, but I know it's true, hehe.
GuitarAtomik
Member
I bet Peter Moore has a million awesome stories like that to tell lol.
What The Forest Taught Me
Member
This is spot on.
Iva Demilcol
Member
I just imagined the translator as a kid who was told to repeat all the dirty words he said in front of his parents.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Seeing Naka amount to fuck all post Sega has been pretty sweet. Dudes arrogance was fluffed to absurd levels during the Sonic 1-3 years and all the horror stories about how he fucked Sega Saturn projects afterwards.
Moore probably had him pegged from day one.
Moore probably had him pegged from day one.
I'd think Nintendo might be the same way with regards to certain features people want on their systems. Like friendcodes being stupid trash.
Key difference is Nintendo never really stopped making great games.
petran79
Banned
Sega definitely were not at their best around that time, but had those teens visited arcades and played games like Virtua Tennis, Ocean Hunter, Virtua Striker, Sega Rally, Lost World, House of the Dead and the whole Sega Model 3 library, they'd change their opinion. Sequels were even better.
In 2002 those games were still hot and technically impressive. No way they'd be developed by backward thinking people. It was the swan song of Sega. After 2003 they can bash Sega all they want.
mobilesworking
Member
*nods, raises glass*
Gentleman Jack
Member
Neighborhood arcades were dead, dead, dead, dead, dead by then.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Man, I really want a Sega movie but I'll happily take another highly embellished page-turner about them from Saturn to post-DC demise in the vein of Console Wars.
It's so sad to me that Sega died.
Out of every console maker from SONY, Microsoft, NEC, and Nintendo, I always felt that Sega made by far the best consoles. From a hardware standpoint, there systems always felt like they weren't compromised. Saturn aside, the Genesis was able to display enough colors to look "16-bit" but while also running with next to no slowdown. The Master System felt like a non-limited NES with a well running titles and varied color pallete. The Dreamcast actually had 3D games look good, run well, and had fantastic image quality.
In terms of library, Sega was difficult to beat. They had a great balance of kid friendly and mature titles, traditional games, and experimental ones, Japanese focused and Western focused, 2D and 3D. The systems had fantastic arcade ports such as Shinobi, Strider, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom 2. And a varied arcade library. But they also had cutting edge and unique console styled games like Phantasy Star, Ranger-X, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Skies of Arcadia.
It makes me so upset that the company that we once knew isn't around anymore. I'd trade Sony or Microsoft for a traditional Sega in modern times in a heartbeat.
Out of every console maker from SONY, Microsoft, NEC, and Nintendo, I always felt that Sega made by far the best consoles. From a hardware standpoint, there systems always felt like they weren't compromised. Saturn aside, the Genesis was able to display enough colors to look "16-bit" but while also running with next to no slowdown. The Master System felt like a non-limited NES with a well running titles and varied color pallete. The Dreamcast actually had 3D games look good, run well, and had fantastic image quality.
In terms of library, Sega was difficult to beat. They had a great balance of kid friendly and mature titles, traditional games, and experimental ones, Japanese focused and Western focused, 2D and 3D. The systems had fantastic arcade ports such as Shinobi, Strider, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom 2. And a varied arcade library. But they also had cutting edge and unique console styled games like Phantasy Star, Ranger-X, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Skies of Arcadia.
It makes me so upset that the company that we once knew isn't around anymore. I'd trade Sony or Microsoft for a traditional Sega in modern times in a heartbeat.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I know there is.
mikezilla2
Member
I'd say Sega's problem is they backed the wrong developers. All the stories of Yuji Naka paint him as very egotistical and driving away other creative forces. Sega put him in charge of Sonic because he wrote the code for the game when the one who should have been in charge was Hirokazu Yasuhara (Carol Yas), who was in charge of overall game design and level design for the Genesis Sonic games.