Page 2...Interview: Peter Moore, President and COO of Sega of America:

NG:  What’s your opinion of the GameCube’s “kiddy image?”

PM:  Well, Nintendo certainly has an incredible grip on the younger market place.  But, when you see them ship a game like Conker’s Bad Fur Day, which is obviously a little bit more risqué.  I think Nintendo can, through the power of its software, really dictate where they want to be.  I mean, the last year has primarily been Pokemon and what have you, certainly Mario, and Mario can be a tough game to play and a really deep game.  So, I never discount Nintendo, we don’t know much about the GameCube right now, you would never see from Nintendo what you’ve just seen, for example, what you just saw from Microsoft an hour ago (Microsoft had just given a revealing demo of the Xbox in the ball room across the street).  But we have visited Nintendo, up in Seattle,  and sat down and looked at it, we like the hardware a lot and we know they will be a powerful force.  Our hope is that we can start flowing GameCube content within the next twelve months from Sega to their platform.

NG:  Have you been working with Camelot on anything?

PM:  I haven’t, no, not personally, but we’ve got 1200 people involved in game development from here to Japan.  So, I haven’t done anything personally, but it wouldn’t surprise me if our product development guys have. 

NG:  What are you plans for the Dreamcast now?  Are you just planning to slowly fade it out?

PM:  Well, yeah it’s still got a lot of life, I mean we can see that in the next six to eight months we still will be selling inventory through.  The price of the Dreamcast now is the same price as the N64 and if I may say so, it’s probably obviously a superior platform to the N64, and it’s selling very well.  We’ve got in our next fiscal year we’ve got a lot of our revenue planned against the Dreamcast software and we’ve got a lot of games coming out for it.  Crazy Taxi 2 and Sonic Adventure 2 both ship in the next 60 days.  

NG:  Yeah, I just had the opportunity to play Sonic Adventure 2 [Sega had a Sonic 2 kiosk behind their booth]

PM:  Yeah, that’s just a demo level, I mean the game is so much deeper than what you just played.  That’s just one of the levels.  There are going to be some surprises in there as well, and he seems a little quicker and faster and-

NG:  Yeah, he did.

PM:  Yeah, um, of course Sonic Team is based here in the U.S.  We have the Japanese Sonic team who lives in San Francisco because you can see San Francisco, obviously, in the game.  So, we put the flavor of American style in there.  Uh... Crazy Taxi 2 is set in New York this time around, new drivers, new cars multi fares lets you pick up two people – if you’ve ever played Crazy Taxi.  So games like that, and the sequel to Shenmue comes in the fall.

NG:  So it sounds like you will be working off of franchises then?

PM:  Yeah

NG:  Do you plan to work on some original things too?

PM:  Yeah, I mean, as well always do; we’ll do some original things.  But right now, as we transition from being a first-party to a third-party our franchises are important to us.  So Jet Grind Radio, Jet Grind is a great game if you’ve never played it.  Jet Grind 2 is ready for the Dreamcast.

NG:  I loved the cel shading.

PM:  Cel shading yeah, yeah, it’s very cool.

NG:  Does the Sonic Team have development kits for the GameCube yet?

PM:  Uh, not that I’m aware of yet.  But, if you were to look at a Sega franchise that fits well on the GameCube then, obviously, Sonic is at the top of that list. And from our point of view, we'll be looking very seriously at what GameCube has to offer, and I know that Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic, really likes the GameCube hardware. So ultimately, it’s not going to be a shock to anybody if Sonic shows up on GameCube. I think the demographics match, from what I understand, [towards the people that the] GameCube will appeal to.  Sonic certainly is a character everybody in the business knows.

NG:  Yeah, he’s awesome.

PM:  Yeah.

...Page 3; Moore's thoughts on violence in games, and reaction to the Sega/Nintendo ill-conceived rumored partnership..