Sega blames Gearbox for Aliens: Colonial Marines disaster

Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has been personally blamed for Colonial Marines’ misleading marketing, as the class action lawsuit continues.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a terrible game, but the question of how it turned out so bad, and who’s to blame, is one of the more complex in recent gaming history.

Unusually, very little of the blame is put at the feet of publisher Sega, and instead Borderlands developer Gearbox is accused of a whole raft of misdeeds; these include creating a demo for E3 that bore little resemblance to the final game and subcontracting the work on the single-player to a completely different developer (who subsequently went bust) and forcing them to make it in just nine months.

On top of that Gearbox is accused of funnelling the money it got for Colonial Marines into making Borderlands, causing Sega to temporarily cancel the game when it found out.

The odd thing about all this is that Sega never tried to sue Gearbox, and GameCentral’s understanding is that this is largely due to embarrassment over the whole debacle at Sega’s Japanese headquarters, and an unwillingness to air the details in public.

But a class action lawsuit by a disgruntled gamer has dragged both companies to court anyway, where Sega has been putting the blame for the marketing blunders squarely on Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford.

Claiming it had nothing to do with the marketing has been Gearbox’s main excuse for getting out of the lawsuit, but according to leaked emails discovered by Polygon that’s not how Sega sees it.

‘I spoke face to face to [Gearbox's Steve] Gibson about their persistent panel leaking,’ wrote Sega of America’s Matt Eyre in one message to other Sega officials.

‘Effectively — it’s Randy [Pitchford] doing whatever the f*** he likes. Apparently he did it twice on [Borderlands 2] also, against, against all plans and despite the fact they asked him not to. I think our best result here is that we have no more panel sessions …’

Pitchford also personally demonstrated the infamous E3 2011 demo (we know, because we were there when he did it) that mysteriously looked so much better than the finished game.

‘During one of my conversations with Gearbox today I verified that the E3 demo is indeed the bar that we should use to determine where the entire game will be,’ said Sega’s Matt Powers in another email.

‘That is Gearbox’s plan and what they believe in. I just wanted to double-check with them and since I did I figured I would pass that along to you.’

There are several other examples of Gearbox doing its own thing in terms of marketing, although how this will affect the outcome of the lawsuit, the next hearing of which is October 29, is unclear.

Console Wars' revisits the '90s clash between Sega and Nintendo

In the "console wars" of the early 1990s, I was in the trenches. Joystick in hand, I fought under the banner of Super Mario for Nintendo against the evil Sega and its not-so-super Sonic the Hedgehog.



At least, that was how it felt in elementary school. In Blake J. Harris' new book, "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation," the wars are fought in the U.S. gaming market, and he pitches Sega as the plucky upstart taking on slow, incumbent Nintendo.

The tale is told largely from the perspective of Tom Kalinske, who revived Barbie at Mattel and was recruited from a Hawaiian sunlounger to lead Sega's U.S. unit into battle. The dialogue-heavy narrative was reconstructed from some 200 interviews.

The book, published by Harper Collins, is already being turned into a movie. But, on paper at least, this is no "Moneyball."

Where Michael Lewis' tale illuminates both baseball and the power of data, "Console Wars" pays too much attention to the Sega C-suite and too little to the games and the kids who played them. It also fails to draw some useful parallels with today's smartphone wars.

The book does offer some amusing trivia. "Donkey Kong" was created when Nintendo lost the videogaming rights to Popeye and had to come up with alternative characters in a rush. Mario was named after Nintendo's office landlord.

Sonic the Hedgehog, meanwhile, was originally called Mr. Needlemouse. He sported a punky spiked collar, fangs and a busty girlfriend named Madonna before Sega's U.S. arm persuaded Japanese counterparts to remove them.


Harris describes the now-classic blue hedgehog as an improbable amalgam of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kurt Cobain, Michael Jordan and Bill Clinton: a ball of 1990s energy helping America shake off the Reagan and Bush years.

That may be a stretch but, as a "tiny underdog" who moved with "manic speed," Sonic was more than just a mascot — he was totemic of Sega's rebellious approach.

"If Nintendo represented control, Sega would represent freedom," Harris writes of Kalinske's strategy.

Nintendo is described much as Apple is today: obsessed with quality even at the expense of development speed, overbearing toward retailers and software developers, and highly litigious. Sega, like the free Android smartphone software Google pits against the iPhone, succeeded by offering friendlier terms to Nintendo's partners.

Any Silicon Valley start-up CEO would admire Sega's scrappy tactics, including pulling an all-nighter to undermine Nintendo's grand unveiling of a price cut.

While Nintendo's informal motto then was "the name of the game is the game," Kalinske's Sega was all pricing and marketing.

Sega's MTV-friendly "Next Level" ad campaign and simultaneous global launch of the 1992 sequel to Sonic succeeded for a while, as Nintendo's U.S. market share plunged from 60% in 1992 to 37% a year later.

But a $100-million marketing campaign did not prevent Sega's follow-up to the Genesis console from flopping a few years later. Sega focused on gimmicky add-ons, while the "tortoise" Nintendo reliably produced high-quality games such as "Donkey Kong Country."

Sega's focus on glitzy marketing recalls Samsung, whose "Next Big Thing" tagline propelled its Galaxy smartphones ahead of Apple's.

But just as Harris says games developers struggled with "too many different systems" at Sega, Apple's best weapon in winning over app makers is still the simplicity of its app store, in contrast to the fragmented world of Android handsets.

Today, your choice of smartphone enlists you in one of two clashing tribes. But as the Sony PlayStation's eventual success at the expense of Sega and Nintendo shows, new fronts can open at any time in the technology war zone.

Humble Bundle SEGA Edition Should Fulfill Your Sonic the Hedgehog Cravings

A new Humble Bundle is available for lovers of SEGA titles, specifically titles which involve Sonic the Hedgehog. Today, people feeling charitable can pick up Sonic 4 Episode I, ChuChu Rocket, and Virtua Tennis Challenge for whatever price they would like, but if you pay over the average of $3.70, you can also get Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, Sonic 4 Episode II, Crazy Taxi, and more to follow soon.

With Humble Bundles, you choose your price for the games, then determine where you would like the money to go. You can split it evenly between developers or can choose to give all proceeds to a predetermined charity. This Humble Bundle is directly involved in aiding the Child’s Play Charity, WaterAid, and UNICEF.

After a few days, Humble Bundle always adds in more games, so for a very low price, mobile gamers can grab a ton of great SEGA titles, so this bundle is not one to pass up. Plus, it’s for a good cause!

Go grab it.

Humble Bundle Link

Sega has no plans for the Wii U Virtual Console

One of the Wii's most notable features was its Virtual Console that offered a pretty comprehensive selection of retro games on older Nintendo hardware. The Wii U's Virtual Console, however, is somewhat lacking and Sega's CS research and development producer Yosuke Okunari recently confirmed on Twitter that the publisher has no plans to bring its older games to the Wii U's VC. (Thanks, GoNintendo.)

When asked about putting old Sega games on the Wii U Virtual Console the Japanese producer simply stated, "There is no such plan."

Twitter user PBZReviews was crestfallen as they were really hoping for some Master System games on Nintendo latest console. At this point Okunari suggested the fan "introduce your hope into Sega West."

On that note, we've requested comment from Sega's western side to confirm that this is the case in North America and Europe as well, but have yet to hear back.

Of course, the Wii U is backwards compatible with the Wii, so you can still play these games by entering "Wii Mode," but they're not going to have Wii U specific features like Miiverse integration or Gamepad support. (Well, technically you can play them on a Gamepad, but need to use the Wii Remote as a controller, and who wants to do that?)