In a recent interview with Glixel, former President and COO for Sega of America Peter Moore revealed what ultimately led to him leaving the company in 2003. Moore revealed that the company had filmed a focus group made up of “a bunch of 18-, 19-year-olds” in late 2001. The teens in the group refereed to Sega as a “Granddad” by saying they “used to be cool, but even he can’t remember why anymore.”
Moore then flew to Japan to direct the feedback to Sega of Japan’s executives and lead developers. As you can guess it didn’t go over well. Moore stated
“Yuji Naka, Naka-san, maker of Sonic, is in the room. Now, he and I have a love/hate relationship on a good day. And we show him this, and it’s subtitled in Japanese, and when it comes to that piece he just [slams his hand on the table], ‘This is ridiculous. You have made them say this. Sega is the great brand, nobody would ever say this, you have falsified!’ He just gets in my face. So I said to the translator, ‘Tell him to fuck off.’ And the poor guy looks at me and says, ‘There’s no expression in Japanese.’ I said, ‘I know there is.’ And that was it. That was the last time I ever set foot in there.”
Moore felt that they were out of touch with trends and people like Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki were holding them back. “The world was changing around them, and we were desperate. I said that we’ve got to get content that is mature. It’s ironic to me that one of their best-selling games, subsequent to all of that, is now Yakuza.”
