Console Wars

by Blake J. Harris

  Nilsen smiled. “Sure thing, boss.” The performance wasn’t over, which surprised the audience almost as much as the blackout had. “But wait, there’s more,” Nilsen said, clicking on the next slide. “Peripherals, an important part of your profit picture!” Following a collective groan, he raced through descriptions of an innovative wireless remote (the Cordless Elite), an intimidating plastic bazooka (the Menacer), and a Sega Genesis cleaning system headed to stores in September. “And that,” Nilsen said, sticking his notes into a folder, “is all I have to tell you today.”

  Just then, through the ballroom doors, Sonic The Hedgehog himself entered, accompanied by Schroeder. “Okay, Sonic,” Nilsen said with a pinch of feigned exasperation. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell the whole world about your new game. But would you mind if I brought Madeline up here to help explain why Sonic 2 is going to be the number one game of 1992 and the most important event in the history of videogames?”

  This was the moment that Nilsen had been waiting for, where he got to finally reveal Sega’s big plans for Sonic 2. But he’d have to wait a moment longer, because as he opened his mouth, Sonic received a thunderous standing ovation. The retailers were on their feet, all of them, shaking the room and causing a tiny earthquake. These people weren’t even cheering for Sega’s sequel plans, since Nilsen had yet to reveal the X’s and O’s. No, they were simply cheering for Sonic; the character, the icon, the emblem of the war against Nintendo. And after this week, the army would be much bigger and stronger, especially after what Nilsen and Schroeder had to say next.

  “Sonic’s back and he’s better than ever!” Nilsen proclaimed as the lingering applause quieted down. After that, he and Schroeder launched into one of their lightning-quick, Abbot-and-Costello-esque banter sessions.

  “That’s right, Al. And this time he’s faster.”

  “Yup, Mad. And he’s cooler!”

  “He’s got more enemies!”

  “More levels!”

  “More attitude!”

  On and on they went, ping-ponging superlatives, introducing Tails, and welcoming a costumed orange fox to join them onstage. But this was all an appetizer for the entrée, which was Sonic 2sday, the videogame world’s first-ever global launch.

  “The entire marketing program,” Nilsen said, “is designed to build awareness for Sonic 2sday, the street date of Sonic 2.”

  “And on that date,” Schroeder explained, “the game won’t just be available at retail in the U.S., but also in Europe, Japan, Australia, and the rest of the world!”

  “Yup,” Nilsen confirmed. “We’re working to make Sonic 2sday the biggest international event since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

  To someone outside this room, the idea of a coordinated worldwide release might have seemed interesting but irrelevant. But the point of a global launch wasn’t to dazzle with concept; the point was that the concept created connection. Normally, with games released at different stores on different days, customers couldn’t help but feel like these things sort of fell out of thin air. But to know the exact date that something would be arriving, to have it circled on the calendar ahead of time, gave the gift of anticipation. For kids, there’s no feeling better than excitement, and for parents, there’s no feeling worse than bursting that bubble, which made it every family’s duty to celebrate Sonic 2sday. It was a marketing ploy, yes, but it worked in the same self-fulfilling way as a blockbuster film did. They’re not called “blockbusters” just because of their budgets; rather, it’s because of the event-like, don’t-be-left-out way that they are marketed, which makes people rush to the theater for the opening weekend, which then makes more people rush to the theater when they hear how big that opening weekend was. The art of the blockbuster is that it popularizes something before it ever even exists, and though Sonic 2 was still months away from completion, Sonic 2sday gave Kalinske and company an opportunity to unleash the biggest blockbuster the videogame world had ever seen.

  “Anyway,” Schroeder said, “you probably want to know when Sonic 2sday is. Well, right now all I can tell you is that it’ll be one of the Tuesdays in November.”

  “Oh, come on, Mad,” Nilsen pleaded. “Tell these nice buyers the date.”

  “I can’t do that,” she explained. “Sonic won’t let me!”

  Actually, Sonic’s creator wouldn’t let her, because he himself didn’t know. As the game neared completion, Naka’s notorious perfectionism became even more pronounced. The game had already been pushed from October to November, and Sega of America was desperately hoping it wouldn’t be postponed again. That would ruin Sonic 2sday, the Christmas season, and Sega’s plans for a new world order.

  “When it comes to the challenge of leading the 16-bit revolution, we’re up to it,” Nilsen said as he neared the end of his presentation. “But we need your help.”

  The retailers were the conduits to the consumer, which made them gardeners capable of planting the seed. So they had to decide whether this was a garden worth growing. Did they want to bet big on Sonic 2? Cover their windows with images of Sonic and Tails? Plaster posters everywhere and hang a giant sign out front with a countdown to the game? Presell the game, track those customers, and reward them with a promotional T-shirt (which would be free to buyers who preordered but would cost stores $2.50 each)? Most important, were they willing to alter their operational and financial procedures so that Sonic 2 could be shipped directly to each of their individual stores? This last proposition was unprecedented—Sega was asking Fortune 500 companies to bypass their long-standing distribution systems for what was literally a fly-by-night delivery. But this was the only way that Sega could ensure a coordinated global release. For this to work, it required a partnership with the people in this room. So it all boiled down to one question: were they in or out? Ultimately, this was what Nilsen’s presentation was asking, but the question wasn’t posed that simply. In the tradition of Sega’s “good crazy” spirit and the torrential pun-derstorm that was Sonic 2 (official tagline: “2fast, 2cool, 2day”), it was issued as a challenge.

  “I have just one question for you,” Nilsen said slowly, measuring the full weight of his final words. “Are you up 2 it?”

  30.

  JUST DO IT

  Smiles widened, glasses clinked together, and inside a chic French restaurant in San Francisco, toasts were made to celebrate revolutionizing the way videogames were advertised. Tom Kalinske then shot a quick, happy glance at Shinobu Toyoda and Ed Volkwein before taking a long sip of an oaky Bordeaux and savoring the significance of this dinner with Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. If someone had told him two years earlier that Wieden+Kennedy would be interested in becoming Sega’s agency of record, Kalinske would have either laughed, rolled his eyes, or assumed that Dan and David’s siblings had started their own ad shop. After all, these were the guys responsible for building the Nike brand into what it is today, coming up with the famous “Just do it” tagline and iconic sneaker campaigns like “Bo knows” (with Bo Jackson), “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood” (with David Robinson), and “Spike and Mike” (with Spike Lee and Michael Jordan). It just seemed wonderfully inconceivable that the Oregon-based agency responsible for transforming Nike into the it sneaker company now wanted to do the same for Sega in the videogame space. But here they all were.

  “So, what happened next?” Wieden asked. “Come on, Tom, don’t leave us in the dark. Did the retailers rise to the challenge or not?”

  “You tell me,” Kalinske said, resuming his recap of Boca. “After the presentations, our first meeting was with Toys.”

  “Toys ‘R’ Us,” Volkwein clarified.

  “Right, Toys ‘R’ Us,” Kalinske continued. “One of the biggest guys in the marketplace. The tastemakers, if you will.”

  “Also very close relationship with Nintendo,” Toyoda piped up.

  “Yup, Toys and Nintendo are peas in a pod,” Kalinske said. “And we’ve got the big pea himself, Charles Lazarus.”

  “And let me guess,” Wieden
said. “He didn’t accomplish all that by acting like a gunslinging risk taker.”

  “Bingo,” Kalinske said. “Which is why we schedule the Toys meeting first. If they’re in, then we’ll know right away that this is going to happen. If not, then at least we’ve got three days in paradise to shake it off.”

  “Go big or go home,” Kennedy said. “Gotta love it.”

  “So the meeting starts, and it’s myself, Paul, Al, Diane, this guy,” Kalinske said, nudging Toyoda, “and Richard Burns, our VP of sales. First thing Mr. Lazarus wants to know is if others are on board. Now, we’ve all been down there a few days, so they don’t know that we haven’t met with anyone else yet. I’m about to tell them this, hoping that the compliment of making them our first might carry some weight, but Burns cuts me off and says that everyone is already on board and we’ve been on with Japan all night to see if they can accommodate this demand. Lazarus looks around the table, each of us trotting out our best poker faces, and he says, ‘Looks like we don’t have any choice. Count us in and make sure we get the biggest order.’ ”

  “That is positively outstanding,” Wieden declared.

  “I can’t even describe the size of the weight that fell off my shoulders,” Kalinske said. “Not only that, but Charles then goes on to instruct his people to work closely with us every step of the way so that both companies can set records with this thing. Amazing, just amazing, and yet . . . that wasn’t even the biggest triumph at Boca.”

  Toyoda and Volkwein crinkled their faces, unsure of what exactly their boss had in mind. “Are you talking about the comment from Griffiths?”

  “No, but that’s up there too,” Kalinske said, in the mood to brag and turning to Wieden and Kennedy to offer an explanation. “Jeff Griffiths is the buyer from Electronics Boutique, and he said something that reinforced how we hoped everyone in the industry was feeling. Toward the end of Boca I asked him how he felt about the event, and without the slightest hesitation, he said, ‘Empowered.’ He then said, and I quote, ‘After years of being lectured to by powerless drones at Nintendo, whose only apparent talent was an annoying ability to make us feel eternally beholden to them for the pitifully small allocations and onerous payment terms, we finally find ourselves sitting face-to-face with people willing to listen to our ideas and act on them.’ His words, not mine,” Kalinske said proudly.

  “Right on,” Wieden said. “We’re honored that you’re even considering us as the guys to help you take down those drones.”

  “Oh, please,” Kalinske said. He appreciated the humble words, but their guests from Oregon were far and away the front-runners for the account. After months of conducting the agency review, Sega had narrowed down their list to three candidates: Wieden+Kennedy, the gods of Nike; Foote, Cone & Belding, the masterminds behind Levi’s 501 jeans; and Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein, a boutique agency whose biggest claim to fame was how close their office was to Sega’s headquarters (a fact they emphasized often, via spontaneous drop-bys). The guys at Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein had the creative chops, no doubt, but with a limited track record and the recent departure of Andy Berlin, one of the small firm’s partners, the competition for Sega’s business was pretty much narrowed down to two. And in the next few weeks, both suitors would be pitching and Kalinske would finally have the agency that would help him bring down Nintendo. “I think your work speaks for itself,” Kalinske told them. “And I honestly can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

  “Can you give us a sneak preview?” Volkwein asked.

  Wieden and Kennedy glanced at each other, smiled, and shook their heads.

  “Not even a hint?” Kalinske asked, goading. “Just a tiny little glimpse?”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Wieden said. “And then you’d miss the presentation, so it would all kind of be for nothing.”

  “But I will say,” Kennedy explained, “that you wanted something revolutionary, and this campaign will be your rallying cry.”

  This got Kalinske even more excited. He couldn’t believe that it had been only a year and half since that big presentation in Japan where he had received approval to revamp Sega. Hiring a new ad agency and investing in a company-redefining campaign had always been the final step in Sega’s makeover, and it was almost time to try to win this beauty pageant. Things were coming together even quicker than Kalinske had imagined, and not just with advertising and retailer relations, but in other spheres as well. Plans for a Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon were reaching the point of reality, distributing Genesis games over television cable wires was almost possible, and the crown jewel of progress was an alliance with Sony. A few days after Boca, Sega of America and Sony Electronic Publishing announced an alliance to make games for the Sega CD. The power play involving these companies shook up the videogame industry, and it even made waves in the mainstream press. On May 21, 1992, the New York Times ran an article by Adam Bryant that explained the crux of the deal: “The broad alliance announced yesterday calls for Sony to tap its full stable of recording artists, actors and movies to create games for the new Sega machines, which will use compact disk technology.” Although Kalinske and Olafsson had wanted this for ages, getting approval from both parent companies had been no small task. After months of respectful pleading, a turning point came when Sega helped Sony out with an unsettling situation.

  In the 1980s, there had been a growing fascination with full motion video (FMV) games. With real actors and hours of prerecorded footage, FMV games were essentially movies where the viewer, or in this case the player, interacted with the content (i.e., shooting monsters, avoiding obstacles) in a way that dictated how the story played out. This intersection of Silicon Valley and Hollywood led many to believe that this represented the next step in the evolution of videogames. One of those believers was Sony’s Michael Schulhof, who in 1990 acquired the rights to four FMV games that had originally been created for Hasbro’s NEMO console but became available when the toymaker pulled the plug on that system. His thinking was that these games, whose files were much too big for 16-bit consoles, would be perfect for Sony’s CD venture with Nintendo. But when that deal fell apart, Sony was left with costly assets and no place to exploit them—until the Sega CD came into focus. This would seemingly be the right home for Sony’s FMV games, but upgrading just two of the games, Night Trap and Sewer Shark, to make them playable on the Sega CD was going to cost nearly $5 million.

  Sony was already lukewarm on the videogame industry and not sure that it was wise to throw more money at the FMV problem. Kalinske and Toyoda, however, really wanted to make a partnership work, not to mention that they needed more software for the upcoming Sega CD release. Given the situation, it seemed like a no-brainer for Sega to offer to foot the bill; this would forge an alliance with Sony, and also keep Sega on the cutting edge of technology. This was a dream scenario, everything Kalinske had wanted, until he took a closer look at the games in question and realized how violent they were. By movie standards, Night Trap and Sewer Shark were no worse than a schlocky horror film, but compared to the typical videogame, they may as well have been snuff films (particularly Night Trap, in which players were tasked with saving scantily clad women from a vicious flock of vampires). As Kalinske watched one of the vampires attack a defenseless girl in the shower, that pang of conscience he hoped had been vanquished returned once again louder than before. Was it really a good idea for Sega to release this kind of game? Probably not, Kalinske thought, but then was reminded of another thought that he’d had years earlier. In the tiny kitchen of Sega’s old office, he had been reading that New York Times article about Peter Main and came to the conclusion that if Nintendo represented control, Sega must offer the freedom of choice. Neither of these games were Kalinske’s cup of tea, but who was he to stand in the way of choice? And so after he decided to get out of his own way, Kalinske, with Toyoda, arranged for Sega to foot half of Sony’s bill for these two games and future FMV development costs, which ultimately helped push
through an alliance between the companies.

  After becoming partners on this, they decided that they would divvy up the slate of FMV games, with Sega publishing some as first-party titles and Sony publishing others under their Imagesoft label. As a courtesy, Sony gave Sega the opportunity to choose first. Well, Kalinske thought, if I’ve already decided to go down this road then I may as well ride it all the way, and he selected Night Trap, which was definitely the more violent of the two, but it was also the one he thought would sell better. The game would be released on October 15, 1992, along with the launch of the Sega CD, officially marking the beginning of a relationship between Sega and Sony that Kalinske hoped would grow much deeper. For better or worse, Sega was all about choice. That was the backbone of their videogame revolution, and it was why an agency like Wieden+Kennedy was excited to work for Sega.

  “Wait,” Glen interrupted, as everyone at the table began to discuss favorite Super Bowl commercials from over the years. “What is the biggest triumph?”

  “What biggest triumph?” Kalinske asked.

  “Earlier,” Glen explained. “You had mentioned a sizable triumph that was neither Toys ‘R’ Us nor the comment by Jeff Griffiths. Now I’m curious.”

  “Oh, that,” Kalinske said with a chuckle. He put his hand on Toyoda’s shoulder and said, “The biggest triumph of Boca was Shinobu catching a massive sailfish.”

  Everyone at the table laughed and turned to Toyoda, who nodded bashfully.

  “How big was the fish?” Wieden asked.

  “I will show you,” Toyoda said, and then pulled out his wallet and showed off a photo of him proudly standing beside an enormous sailfish. “On the first day of Boca, Gary Kusin, who is the founder of Babbage’s, caught a big eighty-inch sailfish. To see this, I thought: wow, very amazing. But then the next day I got one that was an inch bigger and it was an incredible moment.”