Peter Moore: I had to Fire a Lot of People

Peter Moore, current head of EA Sports and one-time head of SEGA of America, has said that it was he who decided the Dreamcast must die.

Speaking in an interview about the last days of SEGA's hardware, Moore said, “So on January 31 2001 we said SEGA is leaving hardware – somehow I got to make that call, not the Japanese. I had to fire a lot of people, it was not a pleasant day.”

Elaborating (and passing the buck a little), Moore said, “We were selling 50,000 units a day, then 60,000, then 100,000, but it was just not going to be enough to get the critical mass to take on the launch of PS2. It was a big stakes game. SEGA had the option of pouring in more money and going bankrupt and they decided they wanted to live to fight another day. So we licked our wounds, ate some humble pie and went to Sony and Nintendo to ask for dev kits.”

So... did you make the call, Mr Moore, or was it the enigmatic “they”?

Moore is less shy about claiming responsibility for the entire next-generation of console gaming. Speaking about how, as far back as 2001, he “believed in online”, Moore said, “Everybody laughed because we had Seganet going with just 50,000 people online… but I always think Dreamcast was the precursor to the next-gen consoles, because we then brought out a broadband adaptor – remember playing Quake 3 through broadband? Only 5% of people had broadband in those days – it sounds like it was a hundred years ago, but it was 2001!”

2001, 100 years ago, it's all just the olden days anyway.

^{Source: The Guardian}