Talk:Sega

Shoichiro Irimajiri's claims

Pinging Sergecross73 and Indrian as users who may be interested in this.

Relevant link: https://mdshock.com/2023/07/10/irimajiri-speaks-out-about-the-saturn-the-32x-and-soas-financial-troubles/

A user recently edited this article to add a claim that Sega of America was not profitable in 1994 through 1996 due to returned stock from retailers, and that Kalinske was given one year to restructure Sega of America and when he didn't, Irimajiri took over and Kalinske was asked to step down. This is a take that's never really been presented elsewhere, as far as I'm aware. While I removed the claim for now because the linked translation is just some guy's unofficial translating the original material and that's a copyright violation, I think it's worth discussing and trying to find an acceptable version of this source. The translating person who runs MDshock stated on a Sonic Retro forum that the original is behind a $50 paywall... and I don't even know exactly where that's linked, because I'm sure it's also a Japanese source.

Opinions on how to proceed? I don't want to just go off the translation because this is an FA and I'm very adamant about the sourcing standards, but I'm really interested in this take and think it's intriguing information. Red Phoenix ^talk 00:44, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

First thing to do would be to try to find that paywalled link and assess if it's a RS. Popcornfud (talk) 12:35, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

This is the linked page on the MDshock article. I'm struggling to navigate it since it's in Japanese (and Google Translate only helps so much). I was able to discern this page is for a business lecture series, and included six lectures given by Irimajiri, the fifth of which is about his time at Sega, bearing in mind he was a longtime executive at Honda before changing companies. I can't figure out in the page where you can see the lecture, though; I'm going off the MDshock author's word that it's paywalled. Red Phoenix ^talk 12:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, got it. This is the link to the lecture about his time at Sega, and it costs 5000 JP yen to view, or about $34 USD. How do we rate it as a reliable source for Wikipedia? Popcornfud (talk) 13:14, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

At the very least, if it's a professional lecture that Irimajiri gave, I think it'd be reliable as an "According to Irimajiri...". And I'd be fine with that - he's technically a primary source, but so much of this company's history is anecdotal, so to say it's according to him and not directly in Wikipedia's voice would be fine with me. Red Phoenix ^talk 13:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. Sergecross73 msg me 20:54, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Who wants to cough up the 34 bucks? I haven't had my check from Wikipedia this month yet. Popcornfud (talk) 21:01, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Even if you did, would you understand Japanese? It may be a matter of how much we trust the translation. Red Phoenix ^talk 02:10, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Another twist?

While looking through the public fiscal reports for Sega while looking into some discussion at Talk:Sega Saturn, I found this little nugget from Irimajiri in the 1998 fiscal year report (noting their fiscal year ended March 31, 1998, so it's really more of 1997):

"The 16-bit SegaGenesis, predecessor to the 32-bit SegaSaturn, contributed greatly to our spectacular business results from fiscal 1992 to fiscal 1994 and helped boost name recognition of the SEGA brand throughout the world. In hindsight, however, it was the very success of SegaGenesis in the U.S. market that ultimately resulted in the Company’s net loss in fiscal 1998. We placed too much emphasis on the then existing market and formulated what turned out to be an ineffective strategy for making the transition from the 16-bit SegaGenesis to the 32-bit SegaSaturn. In a sense, we became trapped by our own success."

This is certainly Irimajiri's opinion, and perhaps it's his business sense as well, but it definitely goes against what many Western journalists have said, which is in line more with Kalinske's thoughts that Genesis was still able to be supported--and the journalists cite the long life of the SNES as evidence of that. Red Phoenix ^talk 01:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

i think you can find japanese journalists that report on irimajiris statement Dop55 (talk) 19:20, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

That would be great. Unfortunately I don’t really know any Japanese to help me look. I will have to go through Sega’s financial reports to see if there are English comments that may be reflective. It would allow us to tell this story from more than just the common Western perspective which comes mostly from interviews with Kalinske. Red Phoenix ^talk 12:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Useless links for significant people

I would like to suggest that the links to Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi, and Yukio Sugino are removed since they just redirect back to the article. Either they get removed or articles about them should be created. I think they are significant enough for articles to be written about them, but I am not sure. Thoughts? A. Astronomy ♥【💬 15:01, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

They might be there because they had articles at one point and were later redirected here. I’d suggest delinking for now. I thought there was a bot that does this kind of stuff? Red Phoenix ^talk 15:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I see. These are {{interlanguage link}} templates. The idea behind them is to link to a relevant article in another language in case we don't have one in English. If notability can be demonstrated, it's possible we could create an article in English (noting that what's considered notable on another language's Wikipedia is not necessarily notable on the English Wikipedia). There are two ways we can fix this; one is to remove them all, and the other is to introduce them for the first use of each person's name in the body as well so it's not just in the infobox. The redirects aren't so much a MOS:CIRCULAR issue just because they're not plain redirects and are instead part of this template, unless someone else disagrees. Red Phoenix ^talk 17:49, 12 September 2024 (UTC)