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NEWS: Former Sega of America President Bernie Stolar Passes Away at 75




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CastMember1991



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 866
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:04 am Reply with quote
Heard all about this guy in a G4 documentary. Sega’s decision to fire him during the Dreamcast era was so dumb.
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KabaKabaFruit



Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 1903
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:51 am Reply with quote
Stolar may have been punctual in helping turn around SEGA during its later years with the success of the Dreamcast but the man isn't without his fair share of controversy. He refused to support the RPG genre, believing that there was no sustainable market for it. If it wasn't for Victor Ireland willing to stand up to Stolar, an entire generation of RPG gamers would've been royally screwed over. His decision to shotgun the Saturn without compromise left a lot of patrons who believed in the system out in the cold.

No sympathies for his loss.
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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 14254
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 9:13 am Reply with quote
RIP Bernie Stolar.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5525
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 9:37 am Reply with quote
Quote:
In 1994, Stolar left Sony and became the president of Sega of America. He told Games Beat in an interview in 2015 that he immediately had the company stop work on the Sega Saturn console and start building new technology.
94 was way too early to start abandoning the Saturn, while you could argue that it was doomed from the start, the lack of support for it left a black mark on SEGA that didn't give publishers any confidence in the Dreamcast.
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Chris Handsome



Joined: 07 Sep 2010
Posts: 321
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:33 am Reply with quote
The Saturn was a great success in Japan, but Sega of America completely screwed over any chances of it had between the delays and trying to artificially extend the life of the Genesis.
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RockSplash



Joined: 28 Oct 2019
Posts: 502
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:45 am Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
Quote:
In 1994, Stolar left Sony and became the president of Sega of America. He told Games Beat in an interview in 2015 that he immediately had the company stop work on the Sega Saturn console and start building new technology.
94 was way too early to start abandoning the Saturn, while you could argue that it was doomed from the start, the lack of support for it left a black mark on SEGA that didn't give publishers any confidence in the Dreamcast.


A major problem that proves Stolar right(unfortunately) was that sega of Japan and America were completely opposed to each other. Neither side worked together, which really caused a riff in things.
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Silver Kirin



Joined: 09 Aug 2018
Posts: 1254
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:31 pm Reply with quote
My deepest condolences to his family, may he rest in peace.
I know that some of his decisions when he worked for SEGA are still controversial to this day and had a negative impact on the Saturn, but the video game business world is quite unpredictable and that was during an era when games were rapidly changing, so I don't know if everybody was sure what were they doing. I believe that even SEGA had released more RPG titles in the West it still couldn't compete against Sony and Nintendo, they had acumulated a lot of losses due to the Genesis add-ons like the 32X and the arcade business (in which SEGA had plenty of games) was in decline as well.
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ninjamitsuki



Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 639
Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology)
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:58 pm Reply with quote
Even though as a JRPG fan I hated every one of his decisions and opinions, I still offer my condolences.
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