News:Peter Moore remembers when he told Yuji Naka "F*** you"

6 September 2008

In a recent interview with Esquire, former Sega of America president Peter Moore, who also was Vice-President of Microsoft's Xbox 360 division, talked about his time at Sega, especially the time he got frustrated with the Sonic creator Yuji Naka. Moore helped launch the Dreamcast and led the company when it decided to move to its current platform-agnostic position in the market. During the time the Dreamcast was available, he gathered focus groups of young gamers to see what they thought of Sega and other gaming companies, asking them, "If these brands were people, who would they be?". Apparently, the consensus among the members of the focus group said Sega was the "granddad with dementia who used to be cool but you couldn't remember why." The focus group was recorded, and Moore went to Japan, bringing Japanese-dubbed tapes of the focus group to the company's headquarters to present the results. Naka, who Moore said was being "a tad conceited", accused Moore of tampering with the results. "'I lost it,' remembers Moore. 'I turned to the interpreter and said 'Tell him, 'f*** you''.'" The translator refused to translate his message to Naka, Moore is sure that Naka got the message. "'Naka had lived in the US for three years, so I knew he understood. I walked out and never returned.'" Moore also revealed some of the results for other companies from the focus group in the interview, with Rockstar being the "drunken uncle who'd show up with a hooker from Vegas" and EA - who Moore currently works for - was considered "the high-school quarter back who always got the cheerleader - an arrogant son of a bitch."