A major figure in the gaming, behind both the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Dreamcast, Bernie Stolar, recently died at the age of 75. The news was announced by friends of Stolar.
Stolar was President and Chief Operating Officer at Sega of America, where he oversaw the development of the popular Dreamcast. Prior to Sega of America, Bernie Stolar was Executive Vice President at Sony Computer Entertainment and helped develop a number of original games for the launch of the original PlayStation. While at Sony, he signed game franchises such as Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld Inhabitants, Spyro The Dragon, and Battle Arena Toshinden.
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“I loved working for Sony,” Stolar told GameBeat during a 2015 interview. “I really loved it. But when the opportunity came up to go to Sega and help rebuild the business and find new hardware, I was very interested in doing it. Of course, I wouldn’t have left Sony if I hadn’t been living in fear of being laid off along with everyone else.” At the time, there were some reorganizations happening at Sony. The executive added that “when I got to Sega, I immediately said, ‘We have to kill the Saturn. We have to stop the Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did.”
And so Bernie Stolar helped bring about the Dreamcast, a console that sold more than nine million units in total.
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The gaming legend joined Adscape Media in 2015, before the company was acquired by Google . “ There was no interest in games at Google at the time ,” Stolar said. “ I went to the CEO, who was Eric Schmidt, and I said, ‘Why don’t we put ads in all these games and give them away for free online ?’ ” He said, “ We’re not in the gaming’re not in the gaming business. We don’t develop games. We get games from publishers and stream through our online network.” He wouldn’t do that. I knew then that I had to leave the company business.” I said, “We them .”
After Google, Stolar worked for a number of startups, including GetFugu, Zoom Platform, Jordan Freeman and CogniToys. “I’ve been doing this since 1980. I love this business. I love it because I get to work with people who are young and passionate,” Stolar explained at the time. “I’m one of the old gray guys in the industry, but it’s great to work with all these young talents.”
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Bernie Stolar was undoubtedly a very important figure in the gaming industry and both Sega and Sony owe him a lot (mainly for the Dreamcast and PlayStation).
Source: www.thegamer.com
