Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki on Sony’s transformation into a console giant: “Sega was too kind”

Famous Japanese game designer Yu Suzukiknown for creating game series Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, convinced that one of the reasons for the collapse Sega her naivety, openness and benevolence became a manufacturer of consoles… According to the developer, before birth Playstation representatives Sega willingly shared their experience in the console market with people from Sony and even considered joint cooperation, but in the end, according to Suzuki, they revealed too much of a foreign company… In the end Saturn turned out to be less attractive to developers than Playstation… Sony gained the upper hand and fired right away, and Sega could not compete with it, stayed far behind, and then completely left the market.

Memories of Suzuki’s Past shared on the pages of the book Sega Hard Historiadedicated to the ups and downs of Sega.

“Sega was too honest, open, benevolent, malleable. And Sony in those years was just going to gain a foothold in the gaming industry. People from Sony asked us questions – we answered them in detail. So we shared all kinds of data. Questions came, answers went. We were all taking the first steps in this new technological direction. It seemed that we were part of one big team. And Sony was also a giant company, they caught everything on the fly.

Before we could look back, they stepped far beyond our expectations. Sega’s internal departments worked on new technologies, no one cared about sales or global development strategies. That is why later Mr. Kutaragi and Mr. Maruyama came to me expressing their personal gratitude. Then I did not fully understand why they were saying thank you to me, “recalls Yu Suzuki.

Sega announced its exit from the console market in January 2001.

You can read more about the formation of the PlayStation brand and the role that Sega played in it in Russian in the large material link.

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