The current EA executive clarified a long-standing rumor that he pulled the plug on Sega’s last console.
Peter Moore has hung his hat at some pretty big brand-name companies. He cut his teeth at the sports apparel giant Reebok, before transitioning to the videogame industry and launching a new console for Sega – the ill-fated Dreamcast which forced the veteran company out of the hardware business. In an interview from 2008, he mentioned “making that call, not the Japanese” regarding the Dreamcast’s discontinuation, but Moore said today that he was just one of about six people to make that decision. It was not his decision alone, but Moore did run the call with hundreds of journalists on the line in 2001 to actually announce the fate of the Dreamcast and it was a experience that will stay with him forever.
“The idea of ‘making the call’ came out of an interview with Keith Stuart of The Guardian did – when I said making the call, I was actually referring to the telephone call,” Moore said. “He interpreted that as making the decision, and I was very much a part of the decision, but it certainly wasn’t just me telling the Japanese team that we need to get out of the console business.”
The holiday season in 2001 was Sega’s last chance to make the Dreamcast work. “We had all agreed – maybe a half a dozen people in the corporation around the world – of what we needed to hit for the platform to continue to be viable going into 2001 and we simply didn’t hit those numbers,” Moore said.
“My comment [to the Guardian] about making the call was that I had to announce – with several hundred journalists on the call, and I shall never forget it – that we were moving on and will not be selling hardware anymore and will be disposing of existing inventory as we transition to third-party publishing,” he clarified.
Well, Moore might not be the “Satan in business casual” that my esteemed colleague Andy Chalk called him in 2008, but that doesn’t absolve him from all his sins. I mean, the Dreamcast! Come on! It had legs!
Source: IndustryGamers
