Former Xbox and EA executive Peter Moore recently recounted the opposition before him when he tried to make Sega understand that it was in decline during the Dreamcast days. As great as the Dreamcast was, especially in hindsight, the platform was not performing well. In trying to explain this to the creator of Sonic, Yuji Naka, Peter Moore told him to "F**ck off" when he denied their waning existence.
Moore didn't say this as an Xbox exec, however. At the time, he was Sega of America's chief operating officer, so the concern of the businesses downfall was internal and legitimate. In an interview with Glixel, he described the challenges he faced during these times.
"We did a focus group here in San Francisco, I'm trying to think what year this would be, probably late 2001, early 2002, because I needed to prove to the Japanese that our brand was starting just to fade away, and so we asked [a] focus group, a bunch of 18-, 19-year-olds, a classic question, 'If a video game publisher was a relative or a friend, who would they be?'"
The unfortunate response from the focus group was: Grandad. Who "used to be cool, but even he can't remember why anymore." Moore brought the results to Naka.
"[Naka] 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 f**k 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 stated that he loved, and still loves Sega, but that the most prominent developers weren't able to "see the world was changing around them." and so the world more or less left them behind.
Shortly after this meeting, Moore was actually approached by Microsoft, looking to challenge Sony's living room dominance. The project they were bringing him on for was the Xbox 360. It goes without saying, he was successful at Xbox.
