SOA Just Doesn't Know What They're Doing!
Brian M. Briones
brianb@hgea.orgHello again all you disgruntled American Saturn owners again, it is I Brian back again to talk about the idiotic management problems of Sega of America once again and to hopefully contribute to making a positive change in their corporate structure here in the United States. As you can see in the title, I've pointed out something I believe is quite clear to every system owner whether or not they have a Saturn. If you just sit and think about what I've said and look deeply into it, you'll see what I'm about to detail and outline below in the following editorial.
First of all one of the things I believe proves SoA doesn't know what they're doing comes from an example out of the little Working Design's incident back at E3 earlier this year. Yes, the one where Vic Ireland charged that SoA didn't want to give him showroom space in their section and had to get Sega of Japan to force them to give Working Designs' a space and SoA later came back with a response that they didn't want to show favoritism and that was the only reason WD got stuck in the back of the Sega's floor space. Well in my eyes, regardless of whether or not WD is at fault for not asking in advance for ample floor space, and regardless of the fact that Vic did call SoJ first rather than discussing the matter with SoA, it is ultimately SoA who is at fault. Why? do you ask? Well let's start off with the fact that WD has stuck with SoA all the way until this bitter end(for now) even though SoA has given them such a hard time with approvals and all that other great stuff SoA has nicely hassled Vic & company with. Let's also not forget the fact that Vic and WD have even openly supported SoA in the newsgroups defending them, and also on their own company webpage offering for sale the hard to find expensive Back-Up cartridges necessary for saving games when the internal memory gets filled. Now I can understand why Sega isn't apologizing in one sense, which is because they didn't intend to give WD the short end of the stick but in another I can't understand why they can't just be understanding of how Vic & company felt when they were given a little corner of the showroom for displaying their wares. I mean this in a sense shows how concerned SoA is about the situation and how little they care, how would you feel if your friend left you hanging unintentionally and didn't have the guts to apologize even after you brought it to his attention? Wouldn't you just want to give them the bird or lose some respect for them if they didn't want to just say sorry just out of respect for your feelings? I know I would and I can understand why Vic has pretty much said screw SoA, they can just get along on their own since they apparently don't need our help. This also shows in general how little respect SoA has for all of their 3rd party developers, especially Bernie Stolar. Why can't SoA take an age old lesson from their own parent company's co-chairman, Hayao Nakayama, and show their 3rd party developers some respect? If I remember correctly, their was a magazine article which had quoted Mr. Nakayama as saying during the starting days of the Sega Genesis(US)/Mega Drive(Japan) that he told 3rd party developers like Capcom not to defect from Nintendo even though these companies wanted to develop for Sega because in the long run they will do better with Nintendo until the time comes to switch allegiances. And you know what? Ever since that time Sega Enterprises has formed strong alliances with the likes of Capcom, Konami(in Japan at least), and various other companies, even more so than Nintendo at times. It just goes to show that Mr. Nakayama knew how to treat the 3rd party publishers with respect rather than suck off of them like dirty leeches.
Which brings me to yet another point, it seems that SoA unlike SoJ hasn't been treating many of the 3rd party developers with much respect at all. In fact if you look at the lineup of upcoming games until Xmas 98 you'll notice it's mostly comprised of games coming from the AM departments, Sonic Team, SoJ, or companies that are only porting their games over because of the strong alliance they have with SoJ like Tecmo(which reconsidered doing Dead or Alive) and Capcom(in the process of getting the 4-Meg Ram cart here for SF vs. [insert names here]). But if you didn't look at those 3rd party publishers you'll notice that the list is mostly made up of Sega's in-house teams. Yes, I agree that they are quite the gaming gods with the ability to make miracles but they can't do it singlehandedly and not by themselves! It's almost as if SoA believes that the in-house teams will be able to carry us on their shoulders until Dural comes. What a bad mistake!! Sure, in all likeliness I'm sure those in-house teams will come through for us but what if(heaven forbid, knock on wood now, start those prayers!) the AM teams, and Sonic Team can't perform the miracles we're expecting to carry us until Dural's arrival? Well let's just say that if Dural is the messiah for Sega(especially America), than I don't think it's going to succeed in bringing SoA or Sega's reputation up from Hell no matter what happens! In my eyes SoA needs to be doing something other than waiting for miracles to come flying out of the in-house teams, like trying very hard to make the Saturn's last days as peaceful and painless as possible for everyone. As everyone knows, I'm sure that if SoA finds any way to f*ck up the Saturn's departure and Dural's entrance you can be sure that you'll be seeing both Hayao Nakayama and David Rosen(the other chairman and founder of Sega) at SoA's headquarters with a big sword beheading all of the idiots(including Bernie Stolar if they're stupid enough or insane enough to renew his contract!!) responsible!! This is not a joke, I'm sure that both Mr. Nakayama and Mr. Rosen is fed up with SoA's incompetence to the point where they wish they could deny its existence and say that it's been taken over by aliens with no brains. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they already haven't claimed this since I know many hardcore Sega fans who are saying this! Man, all anyone has to do to see how badly we need the Japanese influence in the console game market is look at the machines that were strictly American based. Let's look shall we:
1) 3DO-Trip Hawkins first of all had this arrogance that he could bleed the software developers dry and make profits this way, and gouge the consumer with the total bill for the manufacturing of one game unit. The result: the 3DO died in 2 years after release with a super-dismal library of games and a bunch of software developers who swore they would never bother with Trip Hawkins or his lame console ideas for as long as he survives. This is one example of how the American way of doing business doesn't work, and another example of how the Japanese model of doing business works. What could've been done to turn the situation around? Chop the price down off the hardware so that you nearly break even, and make money through the development of quality software. Also don't forget to support the software companies, because if you look at the 3DO business model, the hardware companies took nearly zero responsibility in helping the software developers maximize the machine's potential. Is Sega(of America) going down this same road, and what can be done to reverse the situation? Yes, SoA is quickly going down this same road in terms of sucking the profits of whatever leftover developers are left, and giving nearly zero support to them at the same time. To reverse this situation all they need to do is start remembering that the software developers got them to where they are and remember to help them whenever they ask. For instance, Capcom wants Sega to bring out the 4-Meg Ram cart here in the US, well do it for them!! They're willing to do so much for something SoA could do easily.
2)Atari Jaguar/Lynx-Yet another example of an American company that proves that 3rd party publishers are very necessary. In fact, Atari has proven twice with both the Jaguar and Lynx that 3rd party support is necessary or the console will die no matter how much in-house development you do. Basically Atari said, screw the publishers we don't need them, we'll publish everything by ourselves and buy the licenses to anything not developed by us. Well the end result obviously was that each machine died because number one Atari tried to publish all the games themselves regardless of whether it was theirs or not. Number two, since its not their games they bought the rights to, why bother tweaking it? How can they since they don't know what was the developer's intentions. I'll bet that if those publishers were allowed to develop the games themselves they would've found a way to maximize the game, and the engine for the Jaguar somehow. What could've been done to reverse the situation? The direct opposite of what Atari did, and let the publishers develop the games themselves and market it by themselves. This will ensure the games come out quality and marketing will rule(unless you're Acclaim who thinks that buying movie licenses and making cheap games with it will go anywhere) since the publishers/developers need to swallow and absorb the cost. Is SoA going down this same road and what can be done to reverse it? Very much, they have this arrogance that their in-house teams can do miracles that will save the company from Hell. Hah! If they fail(knock on wood, pray, etc.), let's just remember that Sega will be disgraced forever and will learn the ultimate lesson: arrogance is the downfall of many great companies and leaders. The situation could've been reversed had SoA actually respected the 3rd party developers and actually helped them and embraced their efforts rather than shut their eyes. Also, like Atari, SoA hasn't been willing to put many gambles on the table and bring out different stuff. A lot of their games are either similar to past ones or failures like previous ones. But it looks like with Dural that many 3rd party companies are willing to 'forget' the fact that Bernie Stolar's management of the company and Atari, which he brought to his job at SoA has Chief Operating Officer(COO) and give them a last chance to redeem themselves.
3) Acclaim-Here's a company that took every damn license in the world and turned it into a mindless game or milked it dry. Take the Simpsons, and NBA Jam. Both have had so many spin-offs made by Acclaim that most people cringe when these games are mentioned! This is the worst example of milking any property dry, because they have done it to a point that many people don't want to see Acclaim period. I'm also sure that most people don't want to sell their license to Acclaim either and would rather give it to someone else. What could've been done to reverse this? Acclaim's losses were on games that were just plain bad uses of their license on the properties which include milking the concept dry as the top reason. If Acclaim didn't have anything that was worth playing that absolutely had not been done before or could be done without the license they shouldn't have released it. A whole truckload of Simpson games and NBA Jam games were made which could've been done without. If they actually maximized their licenses on the properties they would've done just fine, and if they actually came up with their own good ideas they might've survived better. Is SoA headed down this same road and if so what can be done to reverse the situation? Not really, but they were pushing it by releasing Fighters Megamix, and releasing 2 badly developed Bug! games. FMM wasn't really bad, but it should've been an all encompassing fighter, but maybe it was just an all AM2 encompassing fighter considering a majority of the characters came from their games. But to prevent this from ever occurring they should continue to develop new ideas and not milk and idea unless it provides a substantial leap in progress over the last game. An example would be that, even though Sega Rally was Sega's best racing game and Daytona USA was also, they haven't yet made a sequel to either except Daytona because Mr. Suzuki finally came up with something new and revolutionary to add. Case #2, Yuji Naka didn't want to make a new NiGHTS game or any other sequel to many of Sonic Team's games because he felt a major development in gameplay was necessary in order to make a worthwhile sequel.
So after reviewing the above, we can definitely see that SoA is somewhat heading on that same trend most of the now defunct American game companies headed and died.
My last point that I need to make is that SoA needs to be more risky and take a chance on some unproven game concepts to ensure they will sell, and at the same time listen to their large hardcore fanbase. If you look at how many people were clamoring for Sakura Taisen, you'll see there were a lot of us out including myself even though I don't know Japanese at all and bought an import copy anyway. Sure, maybe not everyone would buy Sakura Taisen right off the bat, but that's why you release an unproven game concept in small quantities first and be sure that it will succeed first before releasing more. In fact, if you look at what US gamers are playing you'll notice a large majority that played Sakura Taisen have also gotten into games like Tokimeki Memorial(a largely popular date simulation game by Konami with an enormous fan base in Japan), and other really obscure game concepts like Parappa the Rapper, and also Bushido Blade(a sword fighting game based on early Japanese Samurai fighting concepts). Both Bushido Blade and Parappa have found a large fan base in the US even though many people also don't like it, but that's the way it is with many games. What can you expect? The same is true of every game released in the US regardless of whether it is Japanese or American produced. In fact there are even some American ideas that seem just as odd as many of the Japanese games like Bushido Blade and Parappa. So my point is that SoA should've taken a gamble and released a few unknown concepts and let the results speak for themselves.
Well hopefully they will avoid those, and learn a few lessons that SoJ has taught the game industry as a whole. As a side note, I'm going to get it straight that the reason I'm referring to Sega of America separately from Sega is because a reference to just Sega would be wrong. It is Sega of America who specifically has made many fatal screw-ups which fortunately for them haven't buried them yet. When a person refers to Sega of America as just Sega I feel that is a very erroneous reference as the name Sega really refers to the company as a whole which would be the parent of Sega of Japan, Sega of America, Sega of Europe, Sega PC, AM R&D Department #s 1,2,3 and Annex, Sonic Team, and all other divisions that fall under the Sega Enterprises umbrella. To clarify even further, Sega Enterprises rarely ever exercises strict control over SoJ, SoA, or SoE also which is another reason that reference is considered erroneous by myself. It is in fact more true that each branch, SoJ, SoA, and SoE self-governs themselves without little intervention between either companies and anything SoA does has little ramifications on SoE and SoJ and the other way also. On the other hand however, SoJ does have strong influence over SoA and SoE but rarely does it ever influence them in any extremely strong way as one can tell by what has happened with both the Saturn and Genesis/Mega Drive in the US, Europe and Japan. Sorry that this was an extra long rant, but I'm sure most of you can agree with a lot of the points I brought up. You are now returned to your regularly scheduled gameplaying time. Thanx for listening, have a nice day.