By The previous vice president of sales at Nintendo of America, Bruce Lowry, mentioned that departing the company to assist in establishing Sega of America in the mid-1980s was “likely the largest error” of his professional journey.
“Even now, I consider it as potentially the most significant misstep I ever made,” the ex-executive who played a key role in launching the NES told Time Extension. “It was a challenging choice. I had been courted by [Hayao] Nakayama, the Japanese president of Sega, as they sought to enter the U.S. market.”
Sega had reportedly been reaching out to Lowry for more than a year, while he exhibited minimal desire to abandon the mustachioed plumber for his azure competitor. Yet, then a thought struck him. “‘Do you believe you could replicate it, or was it merely luck?'” The inquiry “gnawed” at him, so Lowry resolved to test his fortune.
“It was not a straightforward choice,” he continued. “As I mentioned, to this day, I regret ever making that decision. It will forever trouble me that I did. However, I relocated to San Francisco and essentially established a one-person company. Sega already possessed the arcade division in San Jose, but I became the founder and president of Sega of America. I recruited everyone, organized everything, and it was set to go head-to-head with Nintendo. And it was fundamentally the same marketing strategy I’d implemented at Nintendo.”
Following that, efforts to introduce the Sega Master System to U.S. retailers commenced almost right away, and Lowry faced no challenges getting the sought-after new console onto store shelves, as he was already familiar with all the buyers. After all, he had successfully sold them on the NES.