Tom Kalinske: Sega's Been Doing It Wrong for Past 20 Years!

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02-24-2015, 08:45 PM
Melf

Remember that the 32X was pitched as an add-on as one of many ideas coming from both Japanese and American staff. The idea was already in the early design stages - in Japan, not the US - and the discussion was about how to proceed with it. 32X was not a US idea.

And Sony US was looking at hardware alternatives. That is a fact. Olafsson was very much engaged in that, just as SOA was. American branches were quite active in looking for new potential platforms, not just Japan. I've heard that from more people than just Kalinske.
02-25-2015, 12:32 AM
gamevet

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

Tom Kalinske is a clown.

That clown turned a company that was worth about $800 million into a multi-billion dollar company with the success of the Genesis in North America. The Saturn may be my favorite console of all-time, but I'd be lying if I said that it was a console that could be competitively marketed against the Playstation and N64.
02-25-2015, 02:07 AM
Barone

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

That clown turned a company that was worth about $800 million into a multi-billion dollar company with the success of the Genesis in North America.

Let's see:

- Makes a lot of money based on aggressive marketing AND great games developed by SOJ AND great hardware design by SOJ -> Gets all the credit.
- Smokes millions on shitty FMV stuff -> Gets a free pass.
- Smokes millions on a Multimedia Studio which developed half a dozen of mediocre games -> Gets a free pass.
- Insult-based marketing campaign for the Game Gear with damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard FMV-based campaign for the Sega CD with potential damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Overpromising 32X's campaign ("40X faster" and etc.) with potential damage to Sega's image and Genesis status -> Gets a free pass.
- Poor damage control of the whole "Night Trap" and violent games bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Saturn's awkward and retard advertising campaign -> Gets a free pass.
- Sets up STI with major technical support from SOJ -> Gets all the credit for the good part of the results.
- Fails to deliver a consistent quality control for SOA-subcontracted developed games -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to build a productive in-house or second party development team -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to localize several great games and never releases in US some very good/great games released in Europe -> Gets a free pass.
- Whores out the Sonic brand with the mediocre Sonic Spinball -> Gets praised for the number of units sold.
- Promotes shitty stuff like the "Activator" -> Gets a free pass.
- Loses a lot of market share after so much money smoked on bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Sonic X-Treme debacle -> Gets a free pass.
- Promotes a partnership with Sony and share info with them without SOJ's approval -> Gets a free pass.
- Supports the Joe Miller's 32X design with no real support for 3D -> Gets a free pass.
- 32X released in US with major retailers supply issues -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard surprise launch of the Saturn -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to sell the "millions" of 32X units like he had envisioned and promised to all media -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Fails to sell the Saturn in US -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Blames SOJ for all SOA's failures under his management -> Gets praised by Sega-16.

The pro-SOA bias in this board is very strong, so it doesn't really surprise me.
02-25-2015, 02:43 AM
Iron Lizard

What pro SOA bias? Every other post about Kalinske is damning the guy. Honestly every time I see his name I know the same people will start carrying on like clock work about how much of a liar he is, he doesn't know a thing, he's the false messiah , the devil, eats live puppies.
02-25-2015, 02:50 AM
Obviously

It would all just by hypothetical rambling to say what may have happened if they had partnered up with Sony early on, but it would have been a totally different history that's for sure.

As for Kalinske I feel like people have this insane "BLAME OBAMA" style attitude towards him. His fans attribute all of Sega's successes to him and his haters attribute all of its failures to him. Sega was more than one man, for better and for worse. Granted he sort of asks for it by talking trash but Sega does happen to be an easy target this days.
02-25-2015, 03:23 AM
Lan Di

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

Let's see:

- Makes a lot of money based on aggressive marketing AND great games developed by SOJ AND great hardware design by SOJ -> Gets all the credit.
- Smokes millions on shitty FMV stuff -> Gets a free pass.
- Smokes millions on a Multimedia Studio which developed half a dozen of mediocre games -> Gets a free pass.
- Insult-based marketing campaign for the Game Gear with damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard FMV-based campaign for the Sega CD with potential damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Overpromising 32X's campaign ("40X faster" and etc.) with potential damage to Sega's image and Genesis status -> Gets a free pass.
- Poor damage control of the whole "Night Trap" and violent games bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Saturn's awkward and retard advertising campaign -> Gets a free pass.
- Sets up STI with major technical support from SOJ -> Gets all the credit for the good part of the results.
- Fails to deliver a consistent quality control for SOA-subcontracted developed games -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to build a productive in-house or second party development team -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to localize several great games and never releases in US some very good/great games released in Europe -> Gets a free pass.
- Whores out the Sonic brand with the mediocre Sonic Spinball -> Gets praised for the number of units sold.
- Promotes shitty stuff like the "Activator" -> Gets a free pass.
- Loses a lot of market share after so much money smoked on bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Sonic X-Treme debacle -> Gets a free pass.
- Promotes a partnership with Sony and share info with them without SOJ's approval -> Gets a free pass.
- Supports the Joe Miller's 32X design with no real support for 3D -> Gets a free pass.
- 32X released in US with major retailers supply issues -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard surprise launch of the Saturn -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to sell the "millions" of 32X units like he had envisioned and promised to all media -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Fails to sell the Saturn in US -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Blames SOJ for all SOA's failures under his management -> Gets praised by Sega-16.

The pro-SOA bias in this board is very strong, so it doesn't really surprise me.

No SOA bias, just the facts. Kalinske saved Sega back in those days. Katz was aggressive with his Nintendont campaign, but he didn't have the business savvy and vision to catapult Sega beyond the Nintendo hedge. Hayao Nakayama had no clue how to run a world class game company. The Saturn was the only successful Sega platform in Japan.

Hell, I despised the crappy FMV games just like everyone else. SOA was not perfect, but neither was NOA with the strict censorship policy.

Sega would no way in hell been a success in the Genesis days without Kalinske and SOA. That is an indisputable fact.
02-25-2015, 03:46 AM
sull56ivan2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

Let's see:

- Makes a lot of money based on aggressive marketing AND great games developed by SOJ AND great hardware design by SOJ -> Gets all the credit.
- Smokes millions on shitty FMV stuff -> Gets a free pass.
- Smokes millions on a Multimedia Studio which developed half a dozen of mediocre games -> Gets a free pass.
- Insult-based marketing campaign for the Game Gear with damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard FMV-based campaign for the Sega CD with potential damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Overpromising 32X's campaign ("40X faster" and etc.) with potential damage to Sega's image and Genesis status -> Gets a free pass.
- Poor damage control of the whole "Night Trap" and violent games bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Saturn's awkward and retard advertising campaign -> Gets a free pass.
- Sets up STI with major technical support from SOJ -> Gets all the credit for the good part of the results.
- Fails to deliver a consistent quality control for SOA-subcontracted developed games -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to build a productive in-house or second party development team -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to localize several great games and never releases in US some very good/great games released in Europe -> Gets a free pass.
- Whores out the Sonic brand with the mediocre Sonic Spinball -> Gets praised for the number of units sold.
- Promotes shitty stuff like the "Activator" -> Gets a free pass.
- Loses a lot of market share after so much money smoked on bs -> Gets a free pass.
- Sonic X-Treme debacle -> Gets a free pass.
- Promotes a partnership with Sony and share info with them without SOJ's approval -> Gets a free pass.
- Supports the Joe Miller's 32X design with no real support for 3D -> Gets a free pass.
- 32X released in US with major retailers supply issues -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard surprise launch of the Saturn -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to sell the "millions" of 32X units like he had envisioned and promised to all media -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Fails to sell the Saturn in US -> Blames SOJ for everything.
- Blames SOJ for all SOA's failures under his management -> Gets praised by Sega-16.

The pro-SOA bias in this board is very strong, so it doesn't really surprise me.

I sure am glad I don't have a stick up my ass compared to you.

Mega Drive failed in comparison to Super Famicom and even PC Engine
FMV was a big deal. Some thought it was the future. They did not see the consequences back then.
Genesis does basically insulted Nintendo, and that's what Sega continued to do with Game Gear and Sega CD. It worked the first time, why not do it again?
Once again, FMV was thought to be the future

I could go on and on about your cry-baby post, but I"m pretty sure half the stuff you bitched about is coming from your personal opinion of how things should have went, and not realizing how much Sega's Japan division hated America's. You're blaming Kalinske for X-Treme? I'm pretty sure he was gone by the time they cancelled it. Without Kalinske, Sega doesn't even make half the effort that they made from 1990-94/95.
02-25-2015, 05:05 AM
Yharnamresident

Quote:

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

I don't think the Saturn or Dreamcast were mistakes per se. But a LOT of the choices surrounding and leading up to them absolutely were.

The proposed partnership with Sony could have been huge. It also could have been a total failure of course... but Sega of Japan should have been willing to go to the table and see what they could come up with. The talks would have cost them effectively nothing.

They didn't prevent the Saturn from becoming a mistake, and that domino'd the Dreamcast into becoming a mistake.

I've always thought the Saturn could've been turned around, like the PS3. A bunch of hardware revisions, and making it become a more mainstream product.

But instead, they killed the Saturn too early, and the Dreamcast got released too early. As a result, the Dreamcast didn't have enough disk space, too little RAM, I.E. designed as a stopgap console.
02-25-2015, 05:41 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Remember that the 32X was pitched as an add-on as one of many ideas coming from both Japanese and American staff. The idea was already in the early design stages - in Japan, not the US - and the discussion was about how to proceed with it. 32X was not a US idea.

And Sony US was looking at hardware alternatives. That is a fact. Olafsson was very much engaged in that, just as SOA was. American branches were quite active in looking for new potential platforms, not just Japan. I've heard that from more people than just Kalinske.

All major Hardware ideas would have come from Japan really as SOJ , its up to SEGA West to go with it or not . As soon as it was clear SOJ was going ahead with the Saturn that it was coming in 1994 was the moment the 32X should have been killed . Also Tom can say all he wants about the deal with Sony America . Sony America still to this day doesn't have Hardware R&D only SONY Japan does and back in the very early 90's SONY R&D (for its computers) was tiny and based in SONY Music Japan and they were locked into a deal with Nintendo. So not matter what bull and spin Tom's says , SONY Japan were never able to offer SEGA Japan Hardware

What really killed SEGA was lossing the 32bit battle with the 32X and SEGA never ever really recovered , but still if we listen to TOM the 32X was the only true mass market system and was going to outsell the N64, Saturn, and PS . Nice one Tom lol
02-25-2015, 06:21 AM
A Black Falcon

Is there even one thing on this list which is actually entirely true? I don't think so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

Let's see:

- Makes a lot of money based on aggressive marketing AND great games developed by SOJ AND great hardware design by SOJ -> Gets all the credit.

No, it was because of aggressive marketing, his buildup of Western game development (SoA's internal titles were important to the Genesis's success!), and his successful building of third-party relationships, most importantly EA. And he most certainly doesn't get all the credit -- no one says Kalinske was responsible for making Sonic!

Quote:

- Smokes millions on shitty FMV stuff -> Gets a free pass.
- Smokes millions on a Multimedia Studio which developed half a dozen of mediocre games -> Gets a free pass.

FMV was "the way of the future" in the early '90s, and that expenditure seemed like a good idea at the time. It worked for a while; the Sega CD was the most successful addon of the generation, overall worldwide, because of its moderate success in the US. People wanted FMV games. There's a reason the FMV games are among the most common SCD games, they sold well. Yes, they overspent (the multimedia studio cost too much for what they got out of it, but again, keep it alive and eventually maybe you recoup that investment!), but SoJ was in charge ultimately, and they wasted money right and left. The main problem here was Sega's crash in the mid '90s that led to a gutting of everything Kalinske had spent years building... but that's not his fault.

Basically, blaming Sega for making FMV games is wrong because at the time, people wanted FMV games! They were popular! Why not make something cool, popular, and "the future of games"? Sega always liked pushing tech, so that was a natural thing to do. Hating FMV games because in retrospect they're mostly bad is not something relevant to most of the Sega CD's life, when the genre was popular.

Quote:

- Insult-based marketing campaign for the Game Gear with damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.
- Retard FMV-based campaign for the Sega CD with potential damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.

Neither one of these things hurt Sega at all. The SCD ad campaign focused on FMV because they were really popular at the time so of COURSE you focus on them, any company selling a CD system in the early '90s did exactly that and all for the same reason (as I said above, popular!), and the Game Gear was a successful system that sold pretty decently through the Genesis's life.

Quote:

- Overpromising 32X's campaign ("40X faster" and etc.) with potential damage to Sega's image and Genesis status -> Gets a free pass.

No one sane gives anyone involved in the 32X a free pass. SoJ came up with the idea for the 32X, but yes, he made a mistake in not realizing that it'd be the huge problem that it was.

Quote:

- Poor damage control of the whole "Night Trap" and violent games bs -> Gets a free pass.

Uh, what? This was about Nintendo hypocritically bashing violent games while being about to allow them on their console, not anything Sega did. Blame Howard Lincoln's brilliant, if not exactly truthful (considering MK2 with blood released in '94 on the SNES!), testimony for this one, not Kalinske. And anyway, I think people agree that Sega did not respond to the controversy quite as well as they should have, once Nintendo hit them with the attack.

Quote:

- Saturn's awkward and retard advertising campaign -> Gets a free pass.

People give free passes for the bad Saturn launch campaign? Who? But anyway, better ads wouldn't have saved it. It needed to be better hardware, launching later, at a lower price, and Kalinske had no input on any of those decisions.

Quote:

- Sets up STI with major technical support from SOJ -> Gets all the credit for the good part of the results.

Well, it was an American development team, so of course he'd rightfully get the most credit for STI! But I think people do give some credit to SoJ and Sonic Team too. And there wasn't just a "good part of the results" with STI; everything they did was interesting, and most was pretty good.

Quote:

- Fails to deliver a consistent quality control for SOA-subcontracted developed games -> Gets a free pass.

Are you talking about all those Western-developed games Sega published, many of which sold great and were definite drivers of hardware sales? Those Western games? He did just fine here, for licensed stuff like most of those games were you don't need the best games ever. He should be commended for building up this developer network, it was important to the Genesis's success! I think the late Saturn and all of the Dreamcast's life really was hurt by the fact that they had nothing like it anymore, and instead had to rely on mostly just Japanese games. Those "inconsistent in quality" Western Genesis games were something the Dreamcast would have been helped by too, just like they did the Genesis!

Quote:

- Fails to build a productive in-house or second party development team -> Gets a free pass.

This totally false, STI was a productive in-house development team. (Don't blame them for Sonic X-Treme failing, blame SoJ for messing it up so badly by forcing them to change engines several times, etc. That's not STI's fault, otherwise I think they'd have finished the game probably in '96, under the original design!)

Quote:

- Fails to localize several great games and never releases in US some very good/great games released in Europe -> Gets a free pass.

Sega localized most of the major Genesis titles. You can't expect for more, unfortunately; Japanese companies never bring release of their games overseas. That's still true today. What titles are you complaining about? Saturn games from after he left? Rent-A-Hero and Sorcerian? A couple of anime-license Sega CD games that would have been cool to have but are hardly essential? Third-party titles that stayed in Japan? Don't blame him for that last group, you can't expect the first party to release all Japanese third-party games overseas if the third parties aren't doing so themselves.

Even considering all those Sega CD games that stayed in Japan, Sega's record on the Genesis + SCD + 32X is better than Nintendo's is on the SNES, I think! That's pretty good.

Quote:

- Whores out the Sonic brand with the mediocre Sonic Spinball -> Gets praised for the number of units sold.

They needed a Sonic game for 1993, and Sonic 3 wasn't ready. Spinball isn't the greatest game, but STI did a very good job getting something done fast, and it's a decent game with good graphics. I just wish it wasn't quite as crushingly difficult as it is.

Quote:

- Promotes shitty stuff like the "Activator" -> Gets a free pass.

Eh, I doubt that cost all that much... and you never know with this stuff. I mean, before the Wiimote took off there was no end to the people bashing Nintendo for the idea, Kinect had a lot of critics, etc. Why not release it and see how it does? Once it didn't sell, they dropped it fairly quickly. No problem here. It wasn't a huge focus.

Quote:

- Loses a lot of market share after so much money smoked on bs -> Gets a free pass.

This is entirely 100% SoJ's fault. Follow Kalinske's plans for post-Genesis Sega and this would not have happened.

Quote:

- Sonic X-Treme debacle -> Gets a free pass.

Kalinske left Sega before Sonic X-Treme was cancelled, and it was SoJ, his superiors, who ruined the project, not him. Not his fault. Blame SoJ here.

Quote:

- Promotes a partnership with Sony and share info with them without SOJ's approval -> Gets a free pass.

Sony was a third party who released a bunch of Sega CD games. They weren't just some random company, the two were working together at the time.

Quote:

- Supports the Joe Miller's 32X design with no real support for 3D -> Gets a free pass.

Once again, why are you blaming him for something that was SoJ's idea, the 32X? And anyway, we know they focused more on the two-CPUs thing with the 32X than hardware 3D. Maybe that was a mistake, but it's more than powerful enough to do 3d as we know, so this isn't that bad. It's that the system exists at all that is the actual problem.

Quote:

- 32X released in US with major retailers supply issues -> Gets a free pass.

Most videogame systems that are popular have supply problems if they release close to Christmas. This is in absolutely no way a problem, it's just a sign of the system's popularity!

Of course, as I always say, that popularity was its downfall once all those hundreds of thousands of buyers realized six months later that Sega had killed off the system already, but its popularity that first holiday season was at that moment good for Sega. They had pretty good supply out there, but it all sold because people really wanted the system. (But yes, of course SoA should have anticipated the blowback; I would criticize them for not doing so.)

Quote:

- Retard surprise launch of the Saturn -> Gets a free pass.

We know that SoJ forced this on him. 100% not his fault. Terrible decision by Nakayama here.

Quote:

- Fails to sell the "millions" of 32X units like he had envisioned and promised to all media -> Blames SOJ for everything.

Well, SoJ came up with the idea for a second addon, so of COURSE they have primary responsibility for its failure! It was their idea! But he did say that they over-estimated how popular another addon would be, or something like that, yes? So what you say here is false. He didn't blame it entirely on SoJ, just mostly, and that is the right balance.

Quote:

- Fails to sell the Saturn in US -> Blames SOJ for everything.

Because it was SoJ who made all of those bad decisions that doomed the system. The person responsible for making a bad decision is of course the one responsible for it, you know this yes?

Also, you again seem to have forgotten that he left in early/mid 1996, before the Saturn was entirely dead. That's Bernie Stolar's fault, not Kalinske; Kalinske left with the system heading towards its one and only successful holiday season.

Quote:

- Blames SOJ for all SOA's failures under his management -> Gets praised by Sega-16.

Uh, you DO know that SoJ was in charge, ultimately, and they made the decisions? Kalinske had some autonomy earlier, but in the Saturn era they forced him to obey them, and pretty much destroyed their Western market share as a result.

Quote:

The pro-SOA bias in this board is very strong, so it doesn't really surprise me.

Reality has a SoA bias. :p You know, there are more Genesis systems in the world than Megadrives. There's one example of Kalinske's success. It's not all because of him, it also required great games from SoJ, EA to be interested in moving onto consoles, etc, etc, but he played a key part.
02-25-2015, 06:32 AM
Folco

Kalinske speaking of a possible partnership with Sony for a console, is like when Hawkins talks about the possible partnership between Sega and Matshushita over a M2 based console that is a very unlikely scenario which isn't worth to consider.

Sega quick rise and fall is both spectacular and sad:

http://i.imgur.com/f1yGx6Zl.png

Seems console business (that is consumer business) was losing money since FY'95 (April 1994 - March 1995).
Six years of straight losses.

http://i.imgur.com/A2l4Xtfl.png
Blue: should be Net Income
Red: should be Operating Income
Black bar: should be Revenue
02-25-2015, 10:28 AM
Melf

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

- Makes a lot of money based on aggressive marketing AND great games developed by SOJ AND great hardware design by SOJ -> Gets all the credit.

Not entirely accurate. By the time SEGA started its new campaign under Kalinske (SEGA Scream in 1992), development of western games was largely under way. Some of the biggest hits the Genesis had between 1992-1994 were not Japanese (Jurassic Park, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, etc.). Also, it doesn't matter how good the product is, if it isn't marketed right, it won't sell. Just compare the sales of Sonic The Hedgehog 2 in Japan vs the US and Europe. And you're criticizing him for doing EXACTLY what he was hired to do?

Quote:

- Smokes millions on shitty FMV stuff -> Gets a free pass.

This is true, but not exclusive to Kalinske. There was an entire sub-industry devoted solely to FMV games on multiple platforms. Also, FMV was considered all the rage back then. We see it as shitty now, but many people at the time didn't. It was all part of the multimedia revolution that never really took off on consoles.

Quote:

- Smokes millions on a Multimedia Studio which developed half a dozen of mediocre games -> Gets a free pass.

True, but the MS only made two games, Jurassic Park and Wild Woody. Interestingly enough, while SOA did smoke millions on the experiment (which Kalinske himself admits was a failure), the concept of starting it came from Japan.

Quote:

- Insult-based marketing campaign for the Game Gear with damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.

How did it damage SEGA's image? It was part of the same aggressive campaign that was used for the Genesis and SEGA CD.

Quote:

- Retard FMV-based campaign for the Sega CD with potential damage to Sega's image -> Gets a free pass.

Again, hindsight is 20/20. FMV sucks, yes, but it was considered quite viable at the time, and not just by SEGA.

Quote:

- Overpromising 32X's campaign ("40X faster" and etc.) with potential damage to Sega's image and Genesis status -> Gets a free pass.

What did you expect the CEO of SOA to say about the 32X? "It sucks, so please don't buy it?" What company doesn't overpromise on their hardware? Remember Sony's promises with the PS2? Remember Nintendo's with the N64? It's part of the sales hype, and all companies do it.

Quote:

- Poor damage control of the whole "Night Trap" and violent games bs -> Gets a free pass.

Poor damage control? Sales went through the roof because of the NT incident, and it led SEGA to spearhead the effort for a rating system, something we still use today.

Quote:

- Saturn's awkward and retard advertising campaign -> Gets a free pass.

I agree. I don't know why they didn't just amp up the SEGA Scream campaign and transition it to the Saturn.

Quote:

- Sets up STI with major technical support from SOJ -> Gets all the credit for the good part of the results.

Kalinske had nothing to do with STI. It was already up and running a year before he even got to SEGA. He didn't even make most of the decisions about the games STI developed. Shinobu Toyoda usually had the final word, because STI was a Japanese-led venture. Most of the product development people at SOA didn't even want the STI at all. Also, STI had very little to no technical support from Japan.

Quote:

- Fails to deliver a consistent quality control for SOA-subcontracted developed games -> Gets a free pass.

I'm think SOA did a pretty good job at this. You can argue quality NOW and if the games have held up, but that's not what businesses do. They look for sales, and SEGA consistently got them from its sub-contracted developers. They made a lot of money for the company.

Quote:

- Fails to build a productive in-house or second party development team -> Gets a free pass.

This is SO much more complicated than you think. SOJ agreed to let SOA make games for western audiences, but it wasn't going to all it to make all its own games. That just wasn't going to happen. Second, the STI, SEGA Interactive, SEGA Midwest, and the Multimedia Studios were all attempts at this (something not attempted under Katz), so it's not like they didn't try. When you look at all the facts, that only two of the four actually produced shows how hard it was.

Quote:

- Fails to localize several great games and never releases in US some very good/great games released in Europe -> Gets a free pass.

This is entirely subjective. What's "great" to you doesn't automatically translate into a potential seller. Also, lots of great games WERE released, and you have no way of knowing if some of them would have been left behind so that others could come over.

I'd also say that SOJ had ALL OF THESE GAMES and never got out of third place -> gets a free pass.

Quote:

- Whores out the Sonic brand with the mediocre Sonic Spinball -> Gets praised for the number of units sold.

Sonic Spinball wasn't "whored out," it was done by STI. That means it was done in-house. And it was done because Sonic 3 wasn't going to be ready for Christmas. It was much better to have Sonic Spinball for the holiday sales season than no Sonic at all.

Quote:

- Promotes shitty stuff like the "Activator" -> Gets a free pass.

Shitty peripherals come out all the time. How successful was the Mega Modem or Mega Answer in Japan? I guess they get a free pass?

Quote:

- Loses a lot of market share after so much money smoked on bs -> Gets a free pass.

Market share loss had a lot more to do with money spent "on bs." I've still never heard a SINGLE SOJ person say that SEGA lost because SOA spent too much money.

Quote:

- Sonic X-Treme debacle -> Gets a free pass.

There's a lot here to this, and a lot of it has to do with SOJ.

Quote:

- Promotes a partnership with Sony and share info with them without SOJ's approval -> Gets a free pass.

Companies discuss partnerships all the time. It's part of the business. You establish connections and potential partners and then seek approval from the main branch of the company. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Considering how well SEGA's own Saturn hardware worked worldwide, maybe they should have gone with Sony.

Quote:

- Supports the Joe Miller's 32X design with no real support for 3D -> Gets a free pass.

Japan wanted to make a Genesis with more colors and some 3D a year before Saturn. Seriously, that was the design. The 32X design was the most palatable of a bad selection for a machine that was ALREADY IN DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN. SOJ was making this thing and asked for input AFTER it was already underway. Free pass?

Quote:

- 32X released in US with major retailers supply issues -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to sell the "millions" of 32X units like he had envisioned and promised to all media -> Blames SOJ for everything.

SOJ wanted to sell a million units, and SOA said that 600k was more likely. It sold 600k.

[quote[- Retard surprise launch of the Saturn -> Gets a free pass.
- Fails to sell the Saturn in US -> Blames SOJ for everything.[/QUOTE]

There's much more involved with the Saturn launch than that, and the Saturn was not going anywhere in the west. Yes, it was successful in Japan, but how did it fare everywhere else?

Quote:

- Blames SOJ for all SOA's failures under his management -> Gets praised by Sega-16.

The pro-SOA bias in this board is very strong, so it doesn't really surprise me.

I simply don't understand this perspective. Arguments are made using the input from the people who were ACTUALLY AT SOA, but it's a bias. Meanwhile, those who praise SOJ as the gold standard of excellence (despite the fact that it never got out of a distant third place with the MD and only had success in its own country with a SINGLE console) have not a single shred of evidence from anyone who worked there. Where are all the interviews debunking everything said by Kalinske and dozens of other people? Where are the interviews from people who worked with Kalinske and his team proving him wrong? Or is it a hemisphere-wide conspiracy to make Japan look bad 20 years after the fact?

Shit, even now, when SOA has done practically nothing in since 2000, SEGA's failures are all its fault. SEGA merging with Sammy because it was losing money hand-over-fist? SOA's fault. SEGA downsizing overall and focusing on Mobile games? SOA's fault.

SOJ has done virtually nothing right since the DC died. Hell, it didn't even do that as well as SOA. North America was the DC's best-selling territory. Weird, considering how capable and wise SOJ is. And that hasn't changed, even today. None of the top three games SEGA had in 2014 were made in Japan. SOA and SOE sold more than SOJ did in 2014 too, despite having fewer SKUs to actually sell. And SEGA's best-selling game so far this year? Alien Isolation, which wasn't made in Japan.
02-25-2015, 06:05 PM
stu

I too found the interview very interesting and I agree with Lan Di, Gamevet and Melf and others that without Kalinske the Genesis would not have been the huge success that it was and Nintendo would of likely dominated the market with the SNES, just like they did previously with the NES, kudos to Lan Di for posting it up here (I was going to post it myself but Lan Di beat me to it! :D) I think Kalinske was a visionary leader for Sega and the team he built at SOA achieved the unimaginable when they broke Nintendo's monopoly. Sega made a huge mistake not listening to him when he said that the Saturn was too expensive for the US market and rather than working with SOA to lower the costs of the system so that it could be marketable over here, SOJ told SOA pretty much to "deal with it" and gave them the poison chalice that was the 32x. They then screwed over SOA by demanding that they launch the Saturn early rather than the planned launch in September 1995.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I do tire of this mans lies and spin . SONY Japan was locked into a contract with Nintendo and only SONY Japan do the R&D and had (at the time) what could be called a Hardware console section . Far better if know it all Tom wasn't so lose with SEGA money and put all his efforts behind the Saturn .

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

All major Hardware ideas would have come from Japan really as SOJ , its up to SEGA West to go with it or not . As soon as it was clear SOJ was going ahead with the Saturn that it was coming in 1994 was the moment the 32X should have been killed . Also Tom can say all he wants about the deal with Sony America . Sony America still to this day doesn't have Hardware R&D only SONY Japan does and back in the very early 90's SONY R&D (for its computers) was tiny and based in SONY Music Japan and they were locked into a deal with Nintendo. So not matter what bull and spin Tom's says , SONY Japan were never able to offer SEGA Japan Hardware

What really killed SEGA was lossing the 32bit battle with the 32X and SEGA never ever really recovered , but still if we listen to TOM the 32X was the only true mass market system and was going to outsell the N64, Saturn, and PS . Nice one Tom lol

Umm you do realise that the deal between Sony and Nintendo was DEAD AND BURIED the moment Nintendo went behind Sony's back/screwed Sony over by announcing that they working with Phillips on a CD-ROM system for the SNES instead of Sony? What was Nintendo going to do? Sue Sony for working with Sega? Sony would of counter sued and won.

As for Kalinske's "lies" how about posting some facts to back up your accusations? Frankly I'd rather believe the word of a former Sega exec over someone "off teh internets" but meh that's just me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by retrospiel

No one can convince me that going third party for Sony would have been a good idea.

Why are we assuming that the deal was going to make Sega a 3rd party for Sony? In the excerpt of the interview that Thierry Henry posted earlier it seems clear that a deal between Sega and Sony was going to be a joint venture, where the hardware costs were shared and so that would presume that both Sega and Sony would have released their own versions of the machines, much like how Hitachi and JVC launched their own versions of the Saturn, I also would expect that Sega would have developed the eventual console chipset in to an arcade solution. Hindsight is, of course, 20:20 but I think I would of preferred Sega to have worked with Sony and been successful, rather than the failure they actually ended up by working alone and in competition with Sony.
02-25-2015, 07:17 PM
SEGA.GENESIS1989

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lan Di

No SOA bias, just the facts. Kalinske saved Sega back in those days. Katz was aggressive with his Nintendont campaign, but he didn't have the business savvy and vision to catapult Sega beyond the Nintendo hedge. Hayao Nakayama had no clue how to run a world class game company. The Saturn was the only successful Sega platform in Japan.

Hell, I despised the crappy FMV games just like everyone else. SOA was not perfect, but neither was NOA with the strict censorship policy.

Sega would no way in hell been a success in the Genesis days without Kalinske and SOA. That is an indisputable fact.

http://www.i2i-align.com/wp-content/...1/11/yuuup.png
02-25-2015, 09:51 PM
Barone

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron Lizard

What pro SOA bias?

Lmao. Just look at how many replies and insults I got for calling out Kalinske's bullshit and pointing out some not-so-stellar achievements of his work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Obviously

As for Kalinske I feel like people have this insane "BLAME OBAMA" style attitude towards him.

That actually makes sense since Obama is also a clown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lan Di

Kalinske saved Sega back in those days. Katz was aggressive with his Nintendont campaign, but he didn't have the business savvy and vision to catapult Sega beyond the Nintendo hedge. Hayao Nakayama had no clue how to run a world class game company.

"Saved"??? Seriously.
Katz didn't have the luxury to surf in the same waters that Kalinske found when he arrived at SOA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lan Di

Sega would no way in hell been a success in the Genesis days without Kalinske and SOA. That is an indisputable fact.

Lol.
Do you realize that the actual Mega Drive was very successful in many other countries without Kalinske and his Midas Touch?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010

I sure am glad I don't have a stick up my ass compared to you.

Mega Drive failed in comparison to Super Famicom and even PC Engine
FMV was a big deal. Some thought it was the future. They did not see the consequences back then.
Genesis does basically insulted Nintendo, and that's what Sega continued to do with Game Gear and Sega CD. It worked the first time, why not do it again?
Once again, FMV was thought to be the future

I could go on and on about your cry-baby post, but I"m pretty sure half the stuff you bitched about is coming from your personal opinion of how things should have went, and not realizing how much Sega's Japan division hated America's. You're blaming Kalinske for X-Treme? I'm pretty sure he was gone by the time they cancelled it. Without Kalinske, Sega doesn't even make half the effort that they made from 1990-94/95.

It's cool to see that you've found a good source of testosterone behind your IP.
Sadly for you, anonymity doesn't make people any less stupid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Is there even one thing on this list which is actually entirely true? I don't think so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Neither one of these things hurt Sega at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

This totally false, STI was a productive in-house development team. (Don't blame them for Sonic X-Treme failing, blame SoJ

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

This is entirely 100% SoJ's fault.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Kalinske left Sega before Sonic X-Treme was cancelled, and it was SoJ, his superiors, who ruined the project, not him. Not his fault. Blame SoJ here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

We know that SoJ forced this on him. 100% not his fault. Terrible decision by Nakayama here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Because it was SoJ who made all of those bad decisions that doomed the system.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Uh, you DO know that SoJ was in charge, ultimately, and they made the decisions?

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Reality has a SoA bias.

http://www.syfy.co.uk/sites/syfy.co....x406-39774.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Not entirely accurate. By the time SEGA started its new campaign under Kalinske (SEGA Scream in 1992), development of western games was largely under way. Some of the biggest hits the Genesis had between 1992-1994 were not Japanese (Jurassic Park, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, etc.). Also, it doesn't matter how good the product is, if it isn't marketed right, it won't sell. Just compare the sales of Sonic The Hedgehog 2 in Japan vs the US and Europe. And you're criticizing him for doing EXACTLY what he was hired to do?

I didn't say western software was irrelevant or anything like that.
But, do you really believe that Kalinske would have been so successful during 92-94 without Sonic? Really?
Again, look at the other countries. Sonic was the turning point which made the Mega Drive marketable pretty much everywhere and was a huge boost to its success.
People cite Japan all the time but look at Europe and other countries too. And even in Japan Sonic brought a considerable boost to the MD sales.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

This is true, but not exclusive to Kalinske. There was an entire sub-industry devoted solely to FMV games on multiple platforms. Also, FMV was considered all the rage back then. We see it as shitty now, but many people at the time didn't. It was all part of the multimedia revolution that never really took off on consoles.

And you're telling it to a guy who actually enjoys FMV.
As a gamer, the whole FMV thing doesn't bother me. I was just pointing out that, despite his Genius status to some people here, Kalinske made a lot of mistakes during his work at SOA. He isn't just the guy who multiplied the profits, he is also the guy running SOA during its decline and smoking a lot of money all the time.

The FMV thing didn't fit well in the MD's palette limitations, to begin with. Can we agree about that?
Just an example:
In a retrospective interview with Edge, Ken Melville of Digital Pictures expressed his displeasure at the technical limitations of the video, "All our video had to be tortured, kicking and screaming, into the most horrifying, blurry, reduced-colour-palette mess imaginable in the Sega CD. I shudder to think about it"

The first generation of DP's material was pretty bad looking on its own.

A good share of the press was bashing the shallow and very limited gameplay of those titles back in the days. It isn't just hindsight.

Besides Sewer Shark, which was a pack-in game, and Night Trap which got popular due to the Senate bs, is there a FMV game which actually sold well on the Sega CD? Something which had SOA's money in it and brought any real value to the platform or any kind of positive reputation to it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

True, but the MS only made two games, Jurassic Park and Wild Woody. Interestingly enough, while SOA did smoke millions on the experiment (which Kalinske himself admits was a failure), the concept of starting it came from Japan.

Again, as a gamer, I love their MS-enhanced/made soundtracks for the Sega CD and its concept was actually pretty cool while certainly megalomaniac.

But if we're analyzing his services to SOA as a business man, that was a major failure. It's not that the MS was a whole bad idea but they executed it in a very lousy and megalomaniac way IMO. The ROI just isn't there.

Konami already had something in those lines in Japan, but it wasn't exactly the same train wreck that MS became after some time.
Other companies, like Psygnosis, would hire small studios for a special audio treatment and/or CGI for some games.
The problem with MS, IMO, is that the point which was supposed to justify its "on steroids" size was the one to fail the most: the two games that they created too a long time to be released and they didn't set the world on fire.

Here's an example of how the Sega Multimedia Studio was being treated by the press after some time (Rumor #4):
http://www.defunctgames.com/theysaid...nes-cd-is-real

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

How did it damage SEGA's image? It was part of the same aggressive campaign that was used for the Genesis and SEGA CD.

"If you were color blind and had an I.Q. of less than 12, then you wouldn't mind which portable you had."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Again, hindsight is 20/20. FMV sucks, yes, but it was considered quite viable at the time, and not just by SEGA.

Do you think this was really effective?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

What did you expect the CEO of SOA to say about the 32X? "It sucks, so please don't buy it?" What company doesn't overpromise on their hardware? Remember Sony's promises with the PS2? Remember Nintendo's with the N64? It's part of the sales hype, and all companies do it.

But they did that by claiming that 16-bit stuff was surpassed, done (and the launch line-up had a good share of problems). While Nintendo went with the Super FX approach.
SOA took a lot more risks and when the 32X failed any argument in favor of the Genesis, aside from some big price cut, became totally nonsense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Poor damage control? Sales went through the roof because of the NT incident, and it led SEGA to spearhead the effort for a rating system, something we still use today.

Nintendo explored the whole Senate bs a lot better than SOA. While it gave a momentary boost to some violent games on the Genesis, it ended up hurting the Sega's brand in the long run. They were the "bad guys letting the violent games turn your sons into criminals".

Again, as a gamer, I just love Sega even more due to that but it was an attitude which didn't work well after some time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

I agree. I don't know why they didn't just amp up the SEGA Scream campaign and transition it to the Saturn.

I really would like to barely understand the idea behind most of those commercials and magazine ads.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Kalinske had nothing to do with STI. It was already up and running a year before he even got to SEGA. He didn't even make most of the decisions about the games STI developed. Shinobu Toyoda usually had the final word, because STI was a Japanese-led venture. Most of the product development people at SOA didn't even want the STI at all.

I might have fucked up with the dates then, because I thought it was branded STI under Kalinke's era.
I still don't understand why Sega didn't make any sequels for games like Kid Chameleon (I don't like it but a lot of people do) and Comix Zone at the time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Also, STI had very little to no technical support from Japan.

Mark Cerny said his initial team was trained/aided by SOJ people. Those were the foundations of the STI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

I'm think SOA did a pretty good job at this. You can argue quality NOW and if the games have held up, but that's not what businesses do. They look for sales, and SEGA consistently got them from its sub-contracted developers. They made a lot of money for the company.

At what cost, though? Sonic Spinball sold well but I'm pretty sure that Sonic's image suffered some downgrade after that one, especially for those who actually played it expecting a Sonic Team's quality product. I was one of those guys. My friends simply hated it and it took me some time to get into it but it never felt like a great game IMO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

This is SO much more complicated than you think.

Yeah, let's pretend that all that I think and know is expressed by that one line item.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

SOJ agreed to let SOA make games for western audiences, but it wasn't going to all it to make all its own games. That just wasn't going to happen. Second, the STI, SEGA Interactive, SEGA Midwest, and the Multimedia Studios were all attempts at this (something not attempted under Katz), so it's not like they didn't try. When you look at all the facts, that only two of the four actually produced shows how hard it was.

Again, as a gamer and a Sega fan, I have no problem with that or Kalinske at all.

But the picture isn't very nice from a business point of view.
STI was the most successful one IMO but Sonic X-Treme's debacle pretty much killed it after all.

SEGA Midwest was basically a failure. World Heroes isn't a good port and it was released like a whole year after the SNES version IIRC.

Multimedia Studios we already discussed.

SEGA Interactive was the most productive one IMO. Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude, TaleSpin, Bonkers and Star Wars Arcade are mediocre/bad IMO.
Eternal Champions is OK and sold well. I can't say anything about Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Garfield: Caught in the Act is cool IMO but too short (yeah, the lost levels, where are they?).
Dinosaurs for Hire and Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side I really like and usually take crap here in the forums due to that, hehe.

So, that's SOA/SOJ business model.
OTOH, Nintendo went in a different direction with Rare going second party.
Killer Instinct was far more successful, not only in terms of sales, than Eternal Champions.
DKC pretty much stole the Sonic's momentum and SOA/SOJ never found a proper answer to it.

Some time after that, Sony did kinda like Nintendo with Psygnosis (and many others later on).

Sega's model wasn't as effective and during the 32-bit era it contributed to Saturn's failure in US IMO.

When STI failed to deliver "the new Sonic game", it was TT which "saved" some sales under a "work model" much more like Nintendo-Rare, Sony-Psygnosis than SOA's attempts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

This is entirely subjective. What's "great" to you doesn't automatically translate into a potential seller. Also, lots of great games WERE released, and you have no way of knowing if some of them would have been left behind so that others could come over.

Agreed. Again, I'm not saying he HAD to do all that and 100% perfectly, but those are areas where there was room for improvement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

I'd also say that SOJ had ALL OF THESE GAMES and never got out of third place -> gets a free pass.

Hahah, yes, but I never gave them a free pass. They fucked up the Mega CD as a platform, Saturn's design is a clusterfuck and they were very "shy" with the MD in Japan, to say the list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Sonic Spinball wasn't "whored out,"

I said Sonic's image was whored out. That was a OK-at-best product with a Sonic sticker on it in order to sell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Shitty peripherals come out all the time. How successful was the Mega Modem or Mega Answer in Japan? I guess they get a free pass?

They were laughable attempts by SOJ, no free pass by me.
But look at this:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/k...tor-commercial

It's not like SOA wasn't marketing a clumsy and convoluted thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Market share loss had a lot more to do with money spent "on bs." I've still never heard a SINGLE SOJ person say that SEGA lost because SOA spent too much money.

SOJ people, especially the executive ones, don't talk nearly as much as SOA's though. Well we both know how Japanese traditions deal with ex-employees and ex-employers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

There's a lot here to this, and a lot of it has to do with SOJ.

All that I see as SOJ's "fault" here is the denial to green light some awful gameplay concepts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Companies discuss partnerships all the time. It's part of the business. You establish connections and potential partners and then seek approval from the main branch of the company. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

My understanding is that he didn't have enough autonomy to do that but he did.
I also understand that such "partnership" served more for Sony's purpose than for Sega's. Several Sega CD games were developed using the PSY-Q dev kit around 1994/1995, Kalinske had already mentioned something like a line-up for the next gen that SOA was working on along with Sony at that point. Sony ended up signing a lot of ex-SOA employees and Psygnosis was a major player in PS1's western games development.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Considering how well SEGA's own Saturn hardware worked worldwide, maybe they should have gone with Sony.

I agree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Japan wanted to make a Genesis with more colors and some 3D a year before Saturn. Seriously, that was the design. The 32X design was the most palatable of a bad selection for a machine that was ALREADY IN DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN. SOJ was making this thing and asked for input AFTER it was already underway. Free pass?

This is SOA's and only SOA's side of the history. The one SOJ guy who has spoken recently doesn't seem to tell the same thing.
And, IMO, SOJ's version about SOA's asking for a lower price solution and pushing it sounds a lot more reasonable.

But, in either version, SOA's was responsible to complete the design around the SH2 CPUs. And they went with a software-only approach for 3D, that's Joe Miller not SOJ. And that's a huge mistake IMO.

Also, Kalinske blames SOJ for the lack of 32X games. Really??? Remove the SOJ's games form the 32X's library and see what lasts there.
The same Kalinske, BITD, was talking proudly about how he would sell millions and millions of 32X units, take advantage of a PS1's slow start and make the add-on strong in the market for years. 20 years later, after failed to deliver his own promises over SOA's designed hardware he blames SOJ for everything.
I'm not buying it, really.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

SOJ wanted to sell a million units, and SOA said that 600k was more likely. It sold 600k.

IDK who said that but it certainly isn't a quote from SOJ.
Kalinske's:
"Now, I can sit here and tell you today that no matter how great Saturn is, or PlayStation is, or Ultra 64 is, we will outsell them by an enormous amount with 32X -- simply because of the price."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

There's much more involved with the Saturn launch than that, and the Saturn was not going anywhere in the west. Yes, it was successful in Japan, but how did it fare everywhere else?

And that same question is ignored when we are to praise Kalinke's success with the Genesis.
Let's not forget the work that Kalinske's SOA had made on retailers prior to the Saturn launch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

I simply don't understand this perspective. Arguments are made using the input from the people who were ACTUALLY AT SOA, but it's a bias.

That's ONE SIDE of the history, for Christ's sake.
Why the heck I'm supposed to swallow it like the ultimate truth?
Why I'm supposed to worship Kalinske and forget about all the down sides of his management?
Why I'm supposed to ignore the existence of other countries other than USA?
Why I'm supposed to blame the authors of the best games of the system and the system's great design itself for all problems occurred in US during Kalinske's era? Why?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Meanwhile, those who praise SOJ as the gold standard of excellence (despite the fact that it never got out of a distant third place with the MD and only had success in its own country with a SINGLE console) have not a single shred of evidence from anyone who worked there. Where are all the interviews debunking everything said by Kalinske and dozens of other people? Where are the interviews from people who worked with Kalinske and his team proving him wrong? Or is it a hemisphere-wide conspiracy to make Japan look bad 20 years after the fact?

If you know a thing, a single thing about Japanese culture you'll know the answer.
I'm not saying that SOJ's ex-employees will state the polar opposite of each and every SOA's ex-employees quotes, but to ignore the fact that it's a lot easier to get info from the Western side of things and that such info paints SOJ in a painful negative manner is to be very naive IMO, to say the least.

You can make 100,000 interviews with ex-SOA employees and you won't convince me differently than that Sega's history can have and probably has a whole different perspective if told from SOJ's side.
We may never ever hear a substantial amount of info from SOJ's side but it doesn't matter that SOA's version is the only acceptable "truth".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melf

Shit, even now, when SOA has done practically nothing in since 2000, SEGA's failures are all its fault. SEGA merging with Sammy because it was losing money hand-over-fist? SOA's fault. SEGA downsizing overall and focusing on Mobile games? SOA's fault.

SOJ has done virtually nothing right since the DC died. Hell, it didn't even do that as well as SOA. North America was the DC's best-selling territory. Weird, considering how capable and wise SOJ is. And that hasn't changed, even today. None of the top three games SEGA had in 2014 were made in Japan. SOA and SOE sold more than SOJ did in 2014 too, despite having fewer SKUs to actually sell. And SEGA's best-selling game so far this year? Alien Isolation, which wasn't made in Japan.

This has little to no to do with my argument here.
Japanese games have gone downhill in the last gens, I won't argue here.

Again, I'm not a weebo by any stretch of imagination. I actually like US culture a lot more than JP's, I don't give a shit about mangas, JRPGs and the likes.
But don't expect me to swallow that Kalinske made everything which was successful during his era alone and that SOJ forced him to fail in everything else. I also find it quite disrespectful from his side to badmouth SOJ in every other interview he concedes.
They gave him a great console, several great games, a huge mascot and a lot of technical support.

He was really successful *only* during Sonic's absolute peak. He failed to counter Nintendo after DKC and he failed miserably with the Saturn in US.

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