within Sony, I think a lot of the leadership at the time didn’t take it seriously. They thought: ‘Oh my god, Sega and Nintendo own this thing [the console industry]. You think Sony’s going to come in sideways and try to divvy that thing up into a three piece pie?’ It was a ‘fool’s errand’, I think some of them might have even called it at the time. But [then-Sony president Norio] Ohga-san was a believer. A lot of people thought we were taking a risk. It was a fight to get the Sony name onto the machine - they didn’t want to be associated with it.
Fascinating.
As a gamer back then, folks were super skeptical. Sony Imagesoft didn’t have a great track record mostly known for crappy film to game adaptations like 3 Ninjas Kickback, Bram Stokers Dracula and Cliffhanger.
“What do they know about games?” would be the same complaint levelled at Microsoft a few years later.
The part of the interview about how Sony Music was able to get FFVII and their approach to marketing was really interesting also. Definitely a differentiating factor
Link to part 2 of the interview:
