Bad business decisions killed Sega 20 years ago says former CEO

Sega recently announced they would be getting out of the console market. Instead, they will be focusing on mobile and online PC games. The move came as no surprises to legendary Sega of American CEO Tom Kalinske.

In an interview with Game Industry, Kalinske said  “It could have been avoided if they had made the right decisions going back literally 20 years ago. But they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years.”

It all boiled down to the company’s ill fated dealings with Sony, and he placed the blame squarely on the company’s Japanese executives.

“One of the key reasons why I left Sega is when we had the opportunity to work with Sony, when [Sony Interactive CEO] Olaf Olafsson, [Sony Corporation of America president and CEO] Mickey Schulhof and I had agreed we were going to do one platform, share the development cost of it, share the probable loss for a couple years on it, but each benefit from the software we could bring to that platform.”

“Of course, in those days, we were much better at software than they were, so I saw this as a huge win. We went to Sony and they agreed, ‘Great idea.’ Whether we called it Sega-Sony or Sony-Sega, who cared? We go to Sega and the board turned it down, which I thought was the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business. And from that moment on, I didn’t feel they were capable of making the correct decisions in Japan any longer.”

Tom Kalinske joined Sega in the early 1990s and is largely responsible for the success of the Genesis in North America. He still works in the game industry as the vice chairman of LeapFrog.

You can read the whole interview over on Game Industry.

Image via WTFGamersOnly