Sega Should Have Pursued Hardware - Naka

Former Sega creative director and president of Sonic Team says "we should have taken that risk".

By Kikizo Staff

In a new Yuji Naka interview conducted yesterday and published today on Kikizo, former Sega creative boss and president of Sonic Team has said he feels Sega should have tried harder to pursue its hardware ambitions.

"Until the very final moments, I was very much against Sega ceasing to develop hardware", he said in the interview.

"In a way I feel that, had that decision not been made, Sega would have gone bankrupt - so maybe it was a good business decision. But at the same time, I also feel like, what the hell - we should have given it a go, and we should have taken that risk."

He added: "that is just my personal opinion, because I really enjoyed the hardware side of things at Sega".

Naka, who is credited with programming and producing the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog, said that the whole direction of the company, led by the late Isao Okawa around the time of the hardware exit, had been geared towards network gaming on the Dreamcast console, and that his own project Phantasy Star Online was a poster child for the strategy.

In the interview, Naka says that the corporate colour he's chosen for his Prope studio is orange, because it was colour of the Dreamcast logo.

He also reveals that Lemmings is his favourite game, and confirms that his top-secret, character-based action game will be a Sega release - and that a further Prope project was canned last year.

Naka also finally responded to observers who claim that Michael Jackson produced the music in Sonic 3. Check out the full interview here.