SEGA Clarifies "Creative Pool" Comments

[New Car Smell]

SEGA Clarifies "Creative Pool" Comments
Steinberg admits he shares the "responsibility of innovation."
by Daemon Hatfield

June 18, 2007 - Last week SEGA of America's VP of Marketing Scott Steinberg made some surprising comments to Reuters about the Wii's staying power -- or lack thereof. While the console continues to sell like gangbusters and more and more publishers are announcing their support for the platform, Steinberg admitted he was "a little concerned about the creative depth of the Wii pool."

"The Wii will start to look really dated in a couple years when developers get more value from the 360 and learn more and more about the PlayStation 3," Steinberg said.

The comments caused a bit of a stir on the Internet, with gamers making impassioned cases both in support of and in opposition to Steinberg. It is rare for a publisher/developer to come so close to criticizing a console it hopes to sell games for. On Friday, Steinberg submitted a clarification statement to Reuters in which he backtracks a bit to more neutral ground and praises Nintendo for its sales success.

SEGA of America's VP of Marketing, Scott Steinberg
"SEGA has fully supported the Wii since day one and we continue to do so -- it's no secret that we are close partners," Steinberg explained. "Nintendo has done a masterful job of selling its vision and expanding the market. That said, it's a shared responsibility and opportunity for the whole industry to take advantage of the possibilities of the Wii. If we don't realize its true potential, we will have missed a great opportunity to expand creatively and that is what I was cautioning against in the Reuters interview. I'm not just putting the responsibility of innovation on Nintendo. It's on SEGA and all the publishers and developers as well to carry that flag."

Steinberg is not the first to accuse the industry of not making the most of the Wii. Back at this year's Game Developers Conference, Spore developer Chris Hecker went on a rant about how Nintendo doesn't take videogames as a serious art form, citing the under-powered Wii (which he referred to as "two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape") as evidence. He even went so far as to say "the Wii is a piece of $#)%!" Hecker later retracted his statements.


He had better clarify!

IGN: SEGA Clarifies "Creative Pool" Comments

[ScottSimon1979]

Sega disgusts me, talking smack when virtually all of its consoles failed dismally. I'd rather take hardware advice from Atari...

[t-nodz]

Yeah, SEGA can't talk

they don't even make consoles anymore, and if they keep their game quality as it is right now, they won't be doing that either

[halojames]

Originally Posted by ScottSimon1979

Sega disgusts me, talking smack when virtually all of its consoles failed dismally. I'd rather take hardware advice from Atari...

really i loved segas consoles btw so all you guys know the dreamcast pwned

[Chris]

Originally Posted by halojames

really i loved segas consoles btw so all you guys know the dreamcast pwned

Thank you! Next to Ps2 Dreamcast was the best console created. Too bad the best sent it to an early grave

[midnight1starwars]

i for one love sega and the games that they make. i bet in the future they will come out with a new system that will blow alot of the competion away. da ill one also works for sega and i bet you would not hear him putting down the company

[halojames]

yeah i hope they surprize us with some amazing system too

[Agravain3]

yeah sega cant talk...they aint got $$$$ to back thewy nutz up