Were his decisions good for Sega in the long run?
>>12782696Pointless time wasting question
>>12782696His decisions are literally the reason why Sega doesn't make hardware anymore.
wasnt his fault. sega was always incompetent outside of arcade hardware
>>12782696Yes. But His only mistake was believing that Sega Japan would ever treat Sega America as a true independent company, give him true authority to decide the future of the company, and credit him for saving Sega America. That's not how Japanese politics and culture works. Tom didn't know that
>>12782820Based and Western pilled.
>>12782696The warehouses full of unsold Genesis and Game Gear systems and games would suggest no, no he wasn't. He was out of touch, He was out of time.
>>12782837Every manufacturer is required to keep extra stock in storage as per agreements with American retail companies. This isn't Japan where Nintendo can pretend there's a "shortage" to drive up hype and charge more. Walmart will have you by the balls if you try that here.
>>12782820it made SoJ seethe eternally that SoA was actually making money with the genesis and with one of their properties. now i don't want to say they self-sabotaged the entire company to spite SoA but i wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, say, in the future some SoJ memo leaks that implicates it
>>12782734It was literally his fault. He made the exact decision that caused the Saturn to fail. Dreamcast failed because of low consumer confidence in the Sega brand.
>>12782696His biggest failure was the Sega 32X. He pushed hard for that to be thething that would extend the Genesis' life for a couple more years and it flopped hard. It was a really stupid idea in hindsight because the industry was already starting to embrace 3D as a new frontier and the 32X just wasn't powerful enough to compete with the N64 and PlayStation. By 1994 people were already waiting for the next generation. The best option would've been not making the 32X at all and letting the Genesis wane in popularity as the Saturn was coming out and then sticking to the original September 2, 1995 launch day. That way the Saturn launches in the US with much more titles and you don't waste any money on R&D work for the 32X that could be spent on commissioning developers to make more games for the Saturn. I know that the Saturn's early launch was more the fault of SoJ but Tom needed to speak up more and point out that a successful launch is more important than an early launch.
>>12782842>This isn't Japan where Nintendo can pretend there's a "shortage" to drive up hype and charge moreNintendo doesn't do that in Japan. Also there's leaked company documents from 1997 that show they had a huge amount of unsold inventory and that most of the claimed sales were bullshit.>>12782910>SoA was actually making money with the genesisYou should check those leaked docs from 1997
>>12782842You know, looking back. Nintendo's insistence of "shortages" was actually a really clever way to skirt past the rules of dealing with retail. It's better to "run out" than making way too much of something and then being stuck with a bunch of unsold inventory. I guess Nintendo was just way better at being greedy than Sega. Make sense. They created Wario. The greediest man alive.
>>12782842>Walmart will have you by the balls if you try that hereNo they won't. In fact, it's a practice that Nintendo STILL does. When the Switch 2 came out there were lots of shortages in stores. Not to mention the shortages with the NES Classic and SNES Classic. Theres very little a retail chain can do in that situation because they know it's a top seller reguardless. They can only hold a company like Sega by the balls because they know for a fact that Sega products just don't sell that well. Sega had entire warehouses of unsold consoles that prove this.
>>12782936Pointless document. By 1997, Sega Genesis had already made the company billions of dollars in revenue. A single warehouse or unsold leftovers is completely normal.>Nintendo doesn't do that in Japan.Yes they do. You don't follow the news at all or you are just too young. Every time there's a new console, Nintendo always has a "shortage" in Japan. It was especially bad with the Nintendo 64.
>>12782910I used to work in a white collar job at a large company. I've experienced how petty different departments could be. For example, my manager actively told us to avoid helping the marketing department because she HATED the other female manager who was in charge of the marketing department. I'm guessing because she hated that the marketing department manager was prettier than her. Absolute childish nonsense. I have no doubt Sega experienced the same thing. Japanese office politics are especially cut throat since Asian culture is all about looking good on the outside and saving face. And the 1990s had the Japanese economy bubble burst. Lots of people lost their jobs and the ones that kept their jobs were under immense pressure.There are stories floating around on the internet of the SoJ CEO screaming at the department heads because he hated how they couldn't sell the Sega Genesis in Japan and that Nintendo Japan was beating them. The CEO would often say "why can't you be more like Sega of America and sell more consoles!". That's gotta breed resentment in Japanese employees.>now i don't want to say they self-sabotaged the entire company to spite SoAYou don't have to actively sabotage the company but you can still make passive decisions that hurt SoA. Like not including SoA in meetings, not returning SoA calls, not doing SoA any favors, and refusing to tell SoA important information until much later. I've seen this happen personally at companies I used to work for. Ridiculous petty high school level drama.
>>12782696If it weren't for him, Sega consoles would have been a curiosity in the US like NEC PC Engine or perhaps the Neogeo AES, at best. Sonic never would've gotten a sequel cause it never would have become a country-wide craze by 1992, and Sega would've gone bankrupt in the late 90s.
>>12782936>You should check those leaked docs from 1997And you should read the recent Mike Fischer interview which outright states that SoJ was responsible for pushing too many consoles on SoA that they would be unable to sell. They did because doing so showed up as revenue for SoJ because they in fact sold consoles, and SoA would have to "hustle harder" to push those units to retailers.So when the retailers had enough and returned everything, the entire thing came back to SoJ and had to be written down.Kalinske sold more Genesis consoles alone than Sega of Japan sold all consoles in their entire lifetime.
Japan never understood the Sega brand. Americhads DO what Japcels DON'T.
>>12783575You are very knowledgeable. I'm glad you quoted that interview. I'm sick of all anons and YouTubers who repeat the same nonsense over and over. >Muh 1997 leaked documents They have zero understanding behind the context behind those numbers. They don't understand how business works. They don't understand how retail works. They don't understand that one branch can sell to another branch to make their numbers look better.
Tom Kalinkse claims he's the one that told Sillicon Graphics to go talk to Nintendo, all while he was working for Sega, after SoJ turned down working with Sillicon.I'm sure this news fueled a lot of those Sega conspiracy theorists
>>12782707spbp
>>12783645What's the conspiracy? He was annoyed at Sega Japan for ruining a great deal with Silicon Graphics.
>>12782707His decisions are the only reason Sega made any money. Without North America and Europe, Sega would just be a footnote in history. They were a failure in their own country of Japan. Foreign money kept Sega alive.
SoA killed SEGA.
>>12782943Nintendo is still applying it today. Around the Wii U, when they were doing badly, I clearly noticed that they are printing riskier stuff in short amounts and doing reprints occasionally instead. I don't know if it's something they've always done, but I especially noticed it during the Wii U and it's continuing on Switch for more niche games. You'll notice that a bunch of them are nearly always out of stock, until a reprint
>>12783689It's a common thing for Japanese companies to do. They want their items to seem "premium" and in hot demand so they can charge higher prices. For example, Toyota does this with their cars. They purposely keep production lower at their factoriea, and tell their dealerships to charge a premium to customers. If two comparable cars are compared against each other, and one of them is a Toyota, then the Toyota will easily cost $5000 to $10000 more. All because of their past reputation for reliability. Don't get me wrong. They are reliable cars, but not worth 10k more in price.The car dealerships take advantage of this and say to customers Toyota cars are such high demand that you need to be put on a waiting list. Then charge a massive premium. They often say >"Well It's a Toyota right? They are reliable cars. So much better than American! So you better pay 10k over MSRP to get it and just be grateful to get one at all. And no you don't get to choose the color. Be grateful you are getting one at all." I'll give you another Japanese example: Sushi. It's just rice and fish wrapped in seaweed. In feudal Japan it was considered street food for workers and laborers. They were made into bite sized bits because laborers would have to grab them quickly with their hands during lunch time. No time for chopsticks.But since the 1950s, Japan somehow fooled Westerners into thinking Sushi is some ancient Japanese delicacy that requires decades of training to learn and make. Then charge customers 10000% the cost. All for rice and fish, wrapped in seaweed.Same thing with Sony electronics. Japan claims superior quality but then charges a massive premium because reasons.Almost every Japanese company pushes this idea of limited quantity and requiring premium price
>>12783727>Same thing with Sony electronics. Japan claims superior quality but then charges a massive premium because reasons.Oh yeah that's one of the thing that's killing Sony's electronics. They're not THAT great but desperately wants to be seen as premium products despite no innovations anymore, so everything they make is expensive as fuck and I avoid them like the plague
https://mdshock.com/2022/05/09/a-second-atari-shock-the-decline-of-the-16-bit-console-era/ >in the fiscal period ending in March 1995, Konami took an extraordinary loss of ¥11.6 billion due to clearing out unsold inventory. During the same period, Capcom took a loss of ¥7.5 billion after writing down the value of its American subsidiary, and in the mid-year period ending in September 1995, Nintendo also took a loss of ¥9.8 billion after doing the same with its American subsidiary. This fiscal year, Sega is taking an extraordinary loss of ¥26 billion due to the downsizing of its American and European subsidiaries and due to the disposal of unsold inventory.>Since 1991, Sega has been fighting in the North American and European markets to dethrone Nintendo via the aggressive marketing of its 16-bit game console, the Genesis (Mega Drive). Nintendo, in response, has conventionalized the practice of including multiple free games as pack-ins with the purchase of a console. As a result, although Sega has been able to top Nintendo in North America, the problem of underselling has become severe.>“It’s true that 16-bit consoles sold quite well and we were able to sell off a good portion of our inventory, but the games did not sell at all,” said Sega director Shunichi Nakamura. The best-selling game charts for the past few weeks in North America reveal that almost all of the top titles are for Sony’s PlayStation console. Games for Nintendo’s SNES console, which has sold over 30 million units—far more than the PlayStation—have disappeared from the best-selling charts.>According to Sega’s Nakamura, “Through large-scale mass production, Sega has been able to reduce the manufacturing costs of its 16-bit console to the point where we aren’t losing money on production. However, we can’t earn a profit because the software—the most essential part—is just not selling.”kalinske killed segajapanese should never trust american pigs
Why are Americans so obsessed with Kalinske? He was an exec, not an artist. It's not even a case like Iwata who was a former game creator. It's so weird.
Yuji Nigga killed SEGA. Instead of a proper sonic game we got tranny clown. Instead of having a 3d phantasy star on Saturn we got tranny clown.
>>12783945No idea, but he seemed instrumental in how Sega did during these times and how they possibly fucked upAlthough, as far as I'm aware, for example, Sony's side had a lot of bad decisions too regarding which games game and didn't, even up to the PSP IIRC, but a lot of that info came years later so none of the Sony guys are taking the blame to this level due to that
>>12783943>A translated Japanese newspaper article about North American business issues written by a Japanese authorOh yeah. Totally not biased at all. The Japanese are totally known for taking responsibility for their actions and reflecting on their issues. And they absolutely never blame their own problems on foreigners.
Why is it so difficult for Sega Japan to admit that the Sega Saturn was a terrible system that sold poorly and failed horribly. They have an excuse for everything wrong with the Saturn. >It was terrible at 3D games>um actually if you learned how to program dual cpus then 3D would be great. So what if less than 2% of developers knew how to code dual cpus in 1995?>The arcade ports were awful. Daytona USA on Saturn sucked>Um actually it was Sega America's fault somehow >There is no sonic game>So what if the rest of the world outside Japan loves sonic. Who cares about sonic? Go play virua fighter and Nights into Dreams!
>>12784023i love the console and its library, but Sega of Japan was almost as stubborn as Atari.
