Ditto.
It's getting to a point where they're looking into making movies
from other non-Sonic IP.
I have to say, if we got an animated Skies of Arcadia movie styled after Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Cartoon Saloon, I'd be telling them to shut up and take my money almost immediately.
Here's the archive.org link, which hopefully will be an easier load the the PDF file itself
Basically its Sega of America during fiscal year 1997 detailing business plans, overall brand strategy, consumer research, budgets, merchandise, upcoming software, and so forth.
SEGA of America is officially unionized!
Now they need to hammer out a contract with SEGA itself.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jul 10th 2023 at 3:26:27 PM
Kids, there's nothing more cool than working in an occupation that you like. But if someone tries to force you to work in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's no good! It's your body! No one has the right to work you in ways you don't want to! So what do you do? First, you say no, then you get outta there! Most importanty, you gotta tell someone you trust, like your loved ones, a union, or a proper agency.
:p
I watched someone go over the SEGA papers on stream and do their best to summarize the contents. Mostly, it just shows how absolutely screwed they were when the Saturn rolled out. The 32X/SEGA CD were monumentally disastrous sales-wise. Speeding up the release of the Saturn to make up for their losses basically sealed their fate.
They didn't learn anything, though. They were working on an add-on called the SEGA Pluto to add on-line functionality until it was clear nothing could save the Saturn.
Mostly stuff we already knew or assumed. But now we know how much plastic was left to rot in their warehouses
Edited by Zeromaeus on Jul 11th 2023 at 5:02:12 AM
The narrative is a lot clearer now on how much fault to put with SoA regarding events. Quite a bit, honestly. The popular narrative usually ran as some flavor of "we did great with the Genesis and then SoJ forced the Saturn out early for no good reason." But they were really at the point where the company needed to push to make any kind of profit. Sell-through for all of their American products had entirely bottomed out.
It was SoA pushing back against moving on to the Saturn that led to the development of the 32X.
This is where things got messy. Since we wouldn’t be able to release the Saturn in America, I was told to go there and help resolve the situation. I had just joined Sega at the beginning of July 1993, and by the middle of July, I flew out to Sega of America. I still didn’t have a good understanding of the game industry, so I was just going to listen to what they had to say.
I met with Sega of America president Tom Kalinske and head of software development Joe Miller. They told me that there was no way they could abandon the incredible success of the Genesis.
To quote former SEGA president Irimajiri.
TIL we got some clarification on the cliffhanger ending to Ecco: Tides of Time and why Ecco went back to the time of Atlantis.
A Twitter post
clarified the game would be about the Altantans' war with the Vortex, with Ecco going back to their time to help.
Finally had a chance to watch/listen to the VOD posted earlier.
Still haven't finished it, but the thing that sticks out most to me is that about 800,000 32X systems were made, about half sold during the launch window, and then the thing fell off like a rock. Sega had to sit on the rest of their stock until they pawned off the rest of the units for basically nothing. Also, lots of stock issues in general (mostly surpluses) and a few game cancellations at the time the document was made.
Edited by Karxrida on Jul 16th 2023 at 11:20:44 AM
The stock overages and sales drops were a two-fold problem. Because sell-through matters far more than what they sold directly to stores. SoA would sell as much product as they could, stores were unable to sell them, and then they returned the product to SEGA with a full refund.
So some of the great financial successes that SoA were reporting were reversing entirely as consumers rejected what they were putting on shelves.
And as the Saturn rolled out, stores were not incentivised to even stock the thing. Their profit cut was ludicrously small. If I remember correctly, stores made about $20 per Saturn sold. They got more of a cut from the SEGA Pico.
Edited by Zeromaeus on Jul 16th 2023 at 11:24:12 AM

Glad that SEGA is digging back into their older I Ps besides Sonic nowadays.
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!