Stoner Sonic's Revisionist SEGA History: Brought to you by Sony

[Takao]

http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/52436

Atlantic Books' publisher, Toby Mundy has acquired CONSOLE WARS by Blake Harris, a riveting behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry. Atlantic will publish CONSOLE WARS: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation in August 2014.

Blake Harris draws on hundreds of interviews to present the first full account of this titanic corporate battle, which transformed computer games into a global industry that last year recorded sales of $50 billion (surpassing the film and music businesses combined).

Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin (Moneyball, The Social Network) are developing Console Wars as a feature film to be directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Knocked Up, Superbad). Rogen and Goldberg are also writing the screenplay. Harris is serving as Executive Producer, and is also co-directing a documentary on the same subject, with Rudin, Rogen and Goldberg producing as well.

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Console-Wars-Blake-J-Harris/?isbn=9780062276711

Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars—a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry.

In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo.

The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan.

Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It’s the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry.

will this movie actually get made

[Great Rumbler]

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Oh boy, I can't wait for the dozens into hundreds of pseudointellectual articles that will come from this movie.  It will  be like The Social Network yet even more unbearable.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Its like Polanski making a movie about his victim.

[Phoenix Dark]

*Yuji Naka has spent his trip to America visiting many fast food restaurants and marveling at the free time many Americans have. In the following scene, he enters a Pizza Hut and notices a young black boy playing Super Mario*

Naka: You play games?
Boy: Heck yes
Naka: Mario pretty cool, huh?
Boy: Not really...but it's fun
Naka: If you could make Mario cool...how?
Boy: Well...
*the young boy glances around nervously before looking Mr. Yuji Naka in the eyes*
Boy: I'm tired of Mario getting big, no homo. How come he can't get faster? Oh and it would be cool if he had a bunch of friends, you know, and if they were all easy to draw so fans could draw them too. And if he had a girlfriend and she was pretty, plus a girly sidekick too, for girls to play, not me...
Naka: Sounds like a cool...how you say...cat
Boy: Nah. A hedgehog

*cue Hans Zimmer soundtrack. A montage of Mr. Naka drawing various characters and sidekicks, balling up drawings/throwing them in the trash, before drawing Sonic*

[magus]

[Takao]

I finished reading the novel last week. Eh. It's really a love letter to Kalinske with a lot of witty dialog to try to spice up what would otherwise be dry business speak. It's got kind of a depressing ending as Tom realizes the past few years of his life were wasted on a company too stubborn and prideful to listen.

[originalz]

Is this book any better than Service Games?  That was a pretty detailed history of Sega.

[SpeedStats]

I thought Service Games was a terribly-written book. When I found out that it was a book that scraped all of its info from the guy's old webpages, most of which were not complete and had erroneous info and was filled with the guy's hearsay, I couldn't think of the book as credible any longer.  Service Games is just an awful book all-around with little legitimate outside-sourcing.  Service Games is definitely not recommended for anyone looking for a legitimate source in terms of games history.

I think Console Wars was a pretty fair complement to Masters of Doom and Power-Up/Game Over, all things considered. Some things were obviously done and re-arranged to dramatize the Sega America vs Sega Japan issue and amplify the argumentative atmosphere there, but I think it's a fairly decent compilation of what happened... and with good outside-sourcing too.  Even the Ultimate History of Video Games book is a nice all-around picture, along with Nintendo Magic.

It's just kind of tough to find other game history books of that calibre for other companies.

[tiesto]

Ultimate History of Video Games is a great book but it seems that once you get past the Atari and early Nintendo eras, things start becoming less and less detailed/informative. Like, the Turbo Grafx 16 is only a footnote in the book for example.

[benjipwns]

Part of that might have to do with Steven Kent giving up non-fiction to write science-fiction. He originally said he was going to update that regularly.

[benjipwns]

The Clone Republic (March 2006)
Rogue Clone (September 2006)
The Clone Alliance (November 2007)
The Clone Elite (October 2008)
The Clone Betrayal (October 2009)
The Clone Empire (October 2010)
The Clone Redemption (October 2011)
The Clone Sedition (October 2012)
The Clone Assassin (October 2013)
The Clone Apocalypse (December 2014)

[Joe Molotov]

So...clones, basically?

[Dickie Dee]

Did somebody say clones?
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