Former Nintendo of America vice president of sales Bruce Lowry said he was leaving the company to help form Sega America in the mid-1980s was “probably the biggest mistake” of his career.
“To this day, I think it was probably the biggest mistake I ever made,” said the former executive who helped launch the NES. Time Extension. “It was a difficult decision. I was being chased [Hayao] Nakayama, the Japanese president of Sega, because they wanted to come to the US.”
Sega has apparently been in touch with Lowry for over a year now, and the executive hasn't shown much interest in leaving the mustachioed plumber for his blue rival. But then a thought occurred to him. “Do you think you can do it again, or are you just lucky?” This question was eating away at him, so Lowry decided to test his luck.
“This was not an easy decision,” he continued. “As I say, to this day I wish I had never made that decision. I will always be haunted by the fact that I accepted it. But I moved to San Francisco and was essentially a one-man company. Sega already had an arcade division in San Jose, but I became the founder and president of Sega of America. I hired everyone, got everything set up, and she was ready to go and attack Nintendo. And it was essentially the same marketing plan that I used at Nintendo.”
After this, work almost immediately began to deliver the Sega Master System to US retail stores, and Lowry had no problem getting the new console onto store shelves since he already knew all the customers. He eventually sold them on the NES.
