Peter Moore is a real character in the game industry. He tells you what’s on his mind, he is a true gamer, and he’s been a major force in video games for years. He recently disclosed to Esquire magazine that when he was a top executive at Sega, he said to Yuji Naka, game developer and creator of Sonic, "F**k you."
We leave it to your imagination to fill in the blanks.
The F-Bomb came when Moore was in a boardroom meeting with Naka and other Sega brass. At the time, the Dreamcast was hemorrhaging heavily due to competition from Sony’s PlayStation 2. Moore was trying to show the managers that Sega needed some major overhauls to stay alive.
He recounts what happened at the meeting year’s back, and related how he formed and video taped the reactions of focus groups to evaluate what they though of the various game companies.
Moore asked the question, "If these brands were people, who would they be?" For Sega, the news wasn’t good and it was described as the "granddad with dementia who used to be cool but you couldn’t remember why."
Moore dubbed the voices in Japanese for Naka so he could understand the comments. Appearently, Naka didn’t like what he heard and accused Moore of mistranslating what the people were saying.
And as they say, the rest is history.
"I lost it. I turned to the interpreter and said, ‘Tell him, ‘F*** you.’ Naka had lived in the US for three years, so I knew he understood. I walked out and never returned."
Peter Moore later landed at Microsoft as the vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business, Entertainment and Devices Division, which included the Xbox group. He is now at Electronic Arts and heads the EA Sports division.
We can only wonder, what would have happened if Moore had stayed with Sega and the Dreamcast? Perhaps the playing field, so to speak, for the video games industry would taken another course.
[via gamesradar]
