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In an interview featured in the latest issue of men's magazine Esquire, former Xbox 360 top man Peter Moore recalls how he once lost his cool and said "F*** you!" to Sega dev and Sonic creator, Yuji Naka. The boardroom bust-up happened as the Dreamcast's fortunes were plummeting in the face of competition from PlayStation 2.
Moore - who helped launch Sega's ill-fated machine and was working for the company at the time - wanted to find out how consumers perceived Sega compared with other games companies. He gathered a focus group of twentysomethings and asked "If these brands were people, who would they be?" Apparently, Sega turned out to be the "granddad with dementia who used to be cool but you couldn't remember why."
Moore had tapes of the focus group dubbed in Japanese and headed to Tokyo to report the doddering image of Sega to the company's board. However, when he arrived, Yuji Naka - who Moore describes as being "a tad conceited" - accused Moore of tampering with the dialogue. "I lost it," remembers Moore. "I turned to the interpreter and said, 'Tell him, "F*** you"."
Although the translator refused to convey Moore's feelings, he was pretty sure that his message got across. "Naka had lived in the US for three years, so I knew he understood. I walked out and never returned." What a badass.
Oh, and if you're curious, Moore also reveals that the focus group thought Rockstar was the "drunken uncle who'd show up with a hooker from Vegas". And EA - who Moore works for now - was considered to be "the high-school quarter back who always got the cheerleader - an arrogant son of a bitch."
Hmmm. If game companies were people. Sounds like a sterling idea for a feature...
