Is Sega's Boss Scared Yet? (Kalinske Interview, 1995)

[hashiriya1]

I was going through some of my old gaming mags and I came upon the
March 1995 issue of Next Generation. In it they had an interview
with Tom Kalinske. It is an interesting read knowing how everything
turned out for Sega.

Click on the thumbnails to see large hi-res scans. Enjoy!
You can see my finger in one of the scans, sorry!

[8bit]

Wonderful read! Tom seemed really wise and dead on in some regards... but at the same time Next Generation was basically telling Sega's fortune with its spot on remarks.

-The 32X sucks.
-Sega is taking away from the upcoming launch of the Saturn with the 32X
-Your company is stretched too thin across all of these platforms
-Sony's price point is better.
-Your developers are losing spirit and interest in Sega CD and 32X.

Thanks again for the great post!

[GamerMON]

So what life span are you looking at 32x?

I think three or four years.

[Gnashvar]

He was right about a few things.

-The N64 being cartridge based limited many games.
-3DO being pushed.
-The most important is video games moving into older consumers.

Too bad he was very wrong about Sony...

[dedalusdedalus]

Read Kalinske's response on the third PDF file (pg 08) when the interviewer asked him about his favorite 32X games.

Most of his responses are very composed. But he's really on the ropes there--just blindly groping for the right words, straining to do some explaining. He's ummming and ahhhing more than a guy whose wife just confronted him about the lipstick stains on his shirt.

He definitely knew that the 32X was a piece of crap.

[gtmtnbiker]

Thanks for sharing this. Very fascinating reading. There were some really good, tough questions of the sort that you'll never find in Nintendo Power.

Was the 32x Sega of America's idea?

It was interesting to hear that one of Sega's product managers found it hard to get people enthusiastic about doing a Sega CD game.

If you do scan more articles like this, it would be great. Thanks again!

[YoshiEgg25]

Was the 32x Sega of America's idea?

Yes. Sega of Japan had already started work on the Saturn without telling SoA and it really screwed them over.

[Gunstar Green]

We actually don't know if the 32X's stop-gap plan could have worked or not because Sega of Japan pulled the rug out from underneath Kalinske and SoA way too early. The 32X as a stop-gap idea was actually kind of sound because the Saturn was ridiculously expensive and the Genesis was still popular in the United States.

Unfortunately most of its games were rushed and sub-par with a few exceptions and since Sega failed to support it 3rd party developers who were waiting in the background like Capcom and Konami never got a chance to release their planned titles for the add-on that no doubt would've attracted a lot of people to it. They also charged way too much for it which defeated the purpose of releasing it in the first place and the Neptune probably would've worked as a better stop-gap than the silly add-on idea.

It didn't help that the Saturn itself ended up being hard to program for and it didn't have the best 3D capabilities, a fact which Sony pounced on like a starving cougar.

At the end of the day you can't really blame Sega of America and you can't really blame Sega Japan. Both screwed each other into oblivion. I still wonder if Japan had let Kalinske do what he wanted to do if the 32X would have ended up being as big a flop as it was.

Also remember at the time when this article was written Sony wasn't the gaming giant it is today. Nobody knew if they should be taken seriously or not. A lot of people were expecting it to end up like the 3DO. Nobody really thought the Nintendo/Sega paradigm was going to shift the way it did.

[jfrost]

Sega of Japan would never have let SoA go on with the 32x. The Genesis/Mega Drive wasn't successful in Japan, bringing yet another add-on to the market wouldn't do it any favors. I guess it did make sense for SoA, but it would've been aborted sooner or later anyway.

It's kind of funny that the only Sega console that did fine in Japan was the Saturn (yes, the Dreamcast flopped in Japan too), exactly the one that didn't find any success elsewhere.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Sega of Japan would never have let SoA go on with the 32x. The Genesis/Mega Drive wasn't successful in Japan, bringing yet another add-on to the market wouldn't do it any favors. I guess it did make sense for SoA, but it would've been aborted sooner or later anyway.

It's kind of funny that the only Sega console that did fine in Japan was the Saturn (yes, the Dreamcast flopped in Japan too), exactly the one that didn't find any success elsewhere.

Sega seems to have a history of that. The Master System did fine in Europe. The Genesis did great in America. The Saturn flopped everywhere but Japan. The Dreamcast was extremely popular in America.

They always seemed to have trouble marketing and selling a console in more than one territory.

At least in my opinion, the thing that had a bigger part in killing Sega than Sony, Nintendo, or even the betrayed fanbase was the lack of communication between SoJ and SoA.