Mid-1990s Sega Document Leak
Most of the changes on the Sega Retro wiki every day are tiny things, like single-line tweaks to game details or image swaps. Early Monday morning, the site got something else: A 47MB, 272-page PDF full of confidential emails, notes, and other documents from inside a company with a rich history, a strong new competitor, and deep questions about what to do next.
The document offers glimpses, windows, and sometimes pure numbers that explain how Sega went from a company that broke Nintendo’s near-monopoly in the early 1990s to giving up on consoles entirely after the Dreamcast. Enthusiasts and historians can see the costs, margins, and sales of every Sega system sold in America by 1997 in detailed business plan spreadsheets. Sega’s Wikipedia page will likely be overhauled with the information contained in inter-departmental emails, like the one where CEO Tom Kalinske assures staff (and perhaps himself) that “we are killing Sony” in Japan in March 1996.
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"like the one where CEO Tom Kalinske assures staff (and perhaps himself) that “we are killing Sony” in Japan in March 1996."
He wasn't exactly wrong, and the Saturn did very well in Japan, particularly in the beginning. Based on these documents, it seems that Sega of America was the primary reason for Sega's demise in the hardware business.
