Thread:Loconator3000/@comment-5688420-20200319071856/@comment-5688420-20200324070643

I found a Reddit comment that details most of the stuff he did wrong:

Oh Bernie Stolar I don't have the words to describe how much I loathe you.


 * You didn't want 2D games or RPGs, a policy you instituted at Sony and took with you to Sega, despite the fact that the Saturn was a 2D powerhouse and had lots of RPG support in Japan. Had Sony kept that policy intact the West might not have gotten games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Final Fantasy VII. The Saturn managed to outsell the Nintendo 64 in Japan on the strength of, guess what, 2D games and RPGs (and 2D RPGs).


 * You implemented a "Five Star games policy", in which you tried to only release the very best games, which is fine in theory but a game console needs those 3 and 4 star games while its alive to fill in the gaps between the 5 star games. And a lot of those 3 and 4 star games are made by third parties, which you managed to consistently piss off. Combine the first two points and you get how you drove off Working Designs, who is possibly the most loyal third party publisher I have ever seen, to PlayStation.


 * Lets not forget "Saturn is not our Future" in 1997, effectively killing the Saturn in the west a full two years before the Dreamcast launched. The last Saturn games came out Summer of 1998, so you had one really slow year and one year where you weren't selling ANYTHING.

Now I'm not gonna pretend Sega of Japan wasn't equally stupid: the Genesis did well in America despite Japanese corporate, not because of, and SoJ are the ones who launched the Saturn early in America with no games letting Sony massacre them for the months ahead of the PS1 launch (and lets just not get into Sega as a third party), but as I listed above you made an awful lot of bad decisions all on your own.
 * You then proceed to sell the Dreamcast at $199 when Sega of Japan wanted $249 because they'd lose too much money at the lower price. Its no wonder your ass got sacked when the only thing you did at Sega was make piles of money spontaneously combust.