GamesBeat has reported that the founder of Sony Computer Entertainment America and former president of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar, has passed away aged 75.
Stolar's career kicked off in the 80s after founding a coin-op company, but he soon moved to Atari. There he worked on arcade games, home consoles, and lead the development of the Lynx.
But the 90s is when Stolar would become a big name in the industry. Stolar joined Sony and helped to form Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), where he was the executive vice president. Stolar oversaw the launch of the company's first home console, the PlayStation, and the executive signed off a number of game franchises, including Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Oddworld, and Ridge Racer.
Stolar eventually left SCEA to join Sega, where he told the company that "We have to kill the Saturn". As reported by GamesBeat, Stolar "brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding".
Becoming President of Sega of America in 1998, Stolar was key in getting the Dreamcast to market and was the one to announce the console's price. Stolar was later let go from Sega before the console launched. After this, he joined toy manufacturer Mattel as president and later worked at companies such as Adscape Media, Google, GetFugu, ZOOM Platform, and the Jordan Freeman Group.
We at Nintendo Life and the community send our thoughts and condolences to Stolar's friends and family.
[source venturebeat.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 30
Not the best move to leave Sony for Sega in late 90's. Also he had to make some hard choices firing 210 out of 300 employees of Sega. But death makes everything else trivial in comparison. RIP
Never really heard of the guy I think but sad nonetheless. RIP.
If it wasn't for Stolar, I think the Dreamcast would've been a massive failure and Sega would've been dead in the ground.
Sad to hear this news. Really.
just seeing the name "Bernie Stolar" in print gives me a distinct nostalgic feeling. this guy was a rockstar during the 98/99 Dreamcast hype, and i was very much there for it, hanging on his every word.
RIP Mr. Stolar.
His name is Bernie "Stolar" typo in the title. But anyway this guy hated Japanese videogames especially 2D platformers and JRPGs and was very anti anime he intentionally campaigned for only games that westerners would like on the, Saturn, Dreamcast and early PS1 days which is why there were barely any JRPGs and amazing 2D or 2.5D gems while he was in charge. He actually was the one that got to decide that we would not get localized some amazing 2D platformers and RPGs because he had a 0 tolerance policy for them. So as a hardcore SEGA and PS fan I can safely say we really blame him for the fall of the Saturn and Dreamcast in the west and the initial terrible games available on the PS1
@Slowdive 100% agree
Oh man this guy was like a rockstar game god in the late 90s. I could not have been more hyped for the Dreamcast, and having someone defect from Playstation to become the face of a new Sega console in the West was insanely exciting. RIP dude.
Oh man I forgot about Evolution. Had fun with that game!
Condolences to his friends and family. <3
RIP Stolar, Sega was a scummy company and it was wrong for them to let him go instead of letting him run with the Dreamcast.
I wish his family comfort. Thanks for doing what you did.
I understand the controversy about pricing the Dreamcast at $199 and making huge losses on the first million or so units, but in my opinion it was the right move. the 19.9.99 release date and 199 price point was a marketing gift and Sega would only need to sell 2 games to recoup each loss, and the consoles had an everage pickup of 3 titles for every launch unit sold so they actually made profit at retail... sure, it was less profit per unit sold but I know tonnes of people who were on the fence before that price was anounced and took the plunge after. The important thing to remember was they weren't aiming at the PS2 at launch... they were aiming at the PS1. Having a Dreamcast next to the PS1 in shops for only $50 more was insane when you compared them side by side in stores. When the PS2 launched a year or so later, it was $100 more expensive and the launch titles looked far weaker than the Dreamcast games available at that point.
Yes, he spent a huge amount on advertising, again taking the company temporarily further into debt but it was a necessary gamble in order to make sure that the average consumer even heard of the brand - don't forget many Americans had no idea the Saturn even exists despite those 200+ members of staff he sadly had to let go - SOA had bloated beyond recognition and was making terrible decisions before he came on board.
In my opinion, the "failure" of the DC in the West was NOT due to Stoler's decisions, in fact they were the right choice and lead for a hugely successful launch period, they were constantly sold out of stock and backordered to the hilt. The problems were two fold:
First was from before he came on board - huge losses from the Saturn, 32X and MegaCD, not to mention expensive and unnecessary projects like Nomad, Multimega, Wondermega, unreleased things like the Neptune and Pluto... this confused and annoyed the core customers and made marketing a nightmare, and many stores just refused to stock Sega stuff. Sony had a MUCH bigger marketing budget and could discount the PS1 and massively hype the forthcoming PS2 to bide time.
Second was not his fault - the decision by SOJ not to have the Dreamcast play DVDs. To do so would have raised the price of the units by around $30 and meant paying a small royalty from each unit for decoding the movies (which was why the Xbox charged an extra $20 if you wanted movie playback, which came in the form of buying the remote +IR sensor). The decision by Sega of Japan to not pay this extra was disasterous - can't be overstated how many people bought a PS2 despite the launch library being very weak and the console being $100 more than the DC, simply because it was an "affordable" DVD player that was backwards compatible with their existing PS1 games.
The real stupid marketing was the UK launch (nothing to do with Stoler)... they only had a million or so allocated for UK TV promotion, which wouldn't buy many advertising spots, so they thought it would be more efficient to get the brand shown on TV everytime people watched football... "the UK loves Soccer, right?"... but they did it by sponsoring a single team - Arsenal. Which meant that any die hard fans of other competing teams with equally large fanbases instantly were viamently biased against the brand. Not to mention it barely makes sense to associate Dreamcast with football when you couldn't even get FIFA or Pro Evo for it and all football fans were playing those on PS1. Sigh.
TLDR: The "controversial" marketing and launch strategies of Dreamcast in America were actually incredibly smart and the right thing to do. I can't think of a single thing he could have done better, and the initial record breaking launch backs that up. The console failed because of the previous decisions of others, and Sony having enough money and existing market share to just keep agressively attacking. Without Stoler's decisions, the DC would probably be barely remembered by the American mainstream, like the Saturn.
Sony wanted to bury Nintendo after Big N shoved a knife into Sony's back over the CD drive technology.
From the PS1 and PS2 perspective, they achieved just that and to a certain extent, I think Sega just couldn't come up with much to make a dent in the PS marketing and sales. The PS1 in particular was viewed as the 'it' gadget of its generation and the PS2, which could play all your existing PS1 titles, doubling up as everybody's first DVD player was just the killer blow.
Was he the guy that would've stopped RPGs on PlayStation?
I guess we should still express condolences on his passing.
Say what you will about Stolar, he did help launch both the Dreamcast and the PlayStation. That deserves some kudos in my book.
@samuelvictor Isn't Sony one of the owners of the DVD licensing? So they wouldn't have to pay to put it in PS2.
Among the excessive hardware, I wouldn't say Nomad was a bad idea. If I had been a Sega kid instead of a SNES kid, I'd have asked for that. (not learning until years later there's probably a reason the Bandai licensed portable Super Famicom got canceled)
Wondermega/X'Eye was expensive (and in the US was released really far too late) but that was JVC's problem, not Sega.
We have a lot to be thankful for thanks to this man. May he R.I.P 😔
RIP Bernie, the playstation and dreamcast is two of my favorites console.
@sanderson72 The thing is Sega had all the advantage at the time cause after Nintendo kick Sony from the partnership, Sony went crying to Sega about it and Sega should had comfort them. Instead of comforting them, Sega continue what Nintendo did and eventually pay the price for it. Sega had hundreds of IPs at the time of the Dreamcast to their advantage against Sony and they used none of them except for a select few, no Shinobi, no Streets of Rage, no Golden Axe, no Panzer Dragoon, no Shining Force, no nothing, Sega just wave the white flag instead. All their money went to making two new Sonic games, a Space Channel 5 game, a Virtua Fighter RPG that got turn into something else that's boring, a mouse mini game, the only few that were good are Skies of Arcadia, the Phantasy Star Online games, Jet Set Radio, and the Crazy Taxi games otherwise everything else were just a flop for Sega.
@KingMike Yes that's why Sony fired him was that's also why Sega fired him too cause without RPGs, no one ain't buying. Of course it makes sense for Sony, it just doesn't make sense for Sega. For Sony they make their own disc so they had enough disc for an RPG, for Sega it makes no sense for RPG cause by making RPG, some games would required multiple disc and Sega doesn't manufactured disc so to have an RPG with multi-disc on it would cost Sega a lot to make that possible, same reason why Panzer Dragoon Saga was so expensive for them to make compare to Sony's The Legend of Dragoon and the reason why they could only bring disc 1 of Shining Force III outside Japan instead of all three scenario disc.
@Slowdive Kalinske put Sega on the map
Sega itself was a mess on its own, but I have nothing good to say about Stolar. He was a terrible businessman who only knew how to do one thing, product launches. Once the product was out, he didn't care. Inexplicably, he left Sega with nothing at all to sell for over a year in North America. I always suspected, based on things I remember reading at the time, that he thought Sega of Japan was further along with the Dreamcast and thought he could force their hand early. That didn't work out so well.
@KingMike I meant that Sega and Microsoft would have had to pay.
Essentially you're correct but its slightly more complicated than that - similarly to CDs as a tech, DVD is shared between Sony and Phillips (hense why Nintendo courted and then fell out with both when developing a CD-drive for SNES). However, that's just the discs and optical drives themselves, not the movie playing format.
The stream format is Mpeg2 owned by Moving Pictures Group, which is now free to use as of 2020 but used to require a license, but additionally the actual exact format of DVD movies, menus, subtitles etc to make them compatible with all players is owned by the "DVD Forum" group (previously DVD Consortium) which is 10 major media/tech companies, including Sony and Phillips, but also other major players including Disney, Warner, JVC, Toshiba, etc etc. Nowadays its just a standard flat fee of $5k to produce DVDs to the official standard but it used to be more expensive and require royalties, I believe.
As for Nomad, I agree that it was cool, but the problem was that it came WAY too late (and too expensive) to be a consideration for most kids. By the time it was released, the Playstation and Saturn were already out, AND it cost $180. Eesh. (Gameboy was available for $40 with games included at the time!) Also had the same battery problems they had with Game Gear, so was hardly really "portable".
@KingMike He was against RPGs and 2D games in general, as I recall.
@Serpenterror Sega turned down Sony because Sony had bad third-party publishing cred. I have most of their Famicom lineup just because most of it is hilarious jank. But their 16-bit lineup was largely licensed shovelware (possibly tied to other Sony media properties). Wasn't until the PS launch that Sony surprised us with a serious effort.
@Slowdive
Arrogant?
Nakayama was the arrogant person in the SOA SOJ feud. He forced Kalinske to launch the Saturn four months early with no software pipeline.
@DanijoEX it was a console way ahead of it's time, and a great console......but it was in fact a complete failure. It was the nail in Sega's coffin.
But definitely, RIP to him.
@Kairu All of those games shaped my childhood. RIP Bernie.
I'm getting tired of these deaths... I hope he has a nice Dreamcast game collection up there.
@Slowdive What did Kalinske do?
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