Console Wars (2015)
PART FOUR
CIVIL WAR
49.
SWITCHING SIDES
“Come on, Bill, tell us already,” a retailer pleaded between sips of beer. His request was followed by a chorus of boozy agreement from his industry brethren.
“You owe us,” another shouted. “And we want to hear the story.”
It was a cool June evening in Chicago, and several veteran retailers had stopped by the Sheraton Hotel for a couple of drinks at the bar with Bill White and a handful of employees from Sega. It had been a couple of months since White suddenly exited Nintendo for Sega, and the industry still had no idea what had happened. The lack of information eventually bred gossip, and the guys who had watched Nintendo grow (and profited from that growth) wanted to know which rumor was true. Had he really just snapped? Punched a coworker in the face? Slept with someone’s wife? Or was the truth even more fascinating than all these presumptive fictions?
“There’s no story,” White claimed. “It was just time to move on.”
“Bullshit!”
“Double bullshit!”
“Hey,” White said, cutting off the cacophony, “every day kids go into your stores and choose Sega over Nintendo. So I just figured that it was time I did the same.”
This comment earned a premium smile from Kalinske. The kid had a point, and it showed that he certainly knew how to think on his feet. Seeing him in action for the first time made Kalinske even more pleased that he’d been able to recruit White to Sega. Plus there was that wonderful added bonus of sticking it to Nintendo. And the timing couldn’t have been better. A few weeks earlier, Ken Griffey Jr. had been in the Bay Area to play the Oakland Athletics. Kalinske was supposed to meet with him and his agent again and hopefully finalize a deal, but days before their tentative meeting Nintendo had managed to sign the slugger to a videogame deal of their own. It appeared Nintendo was finally waking up and acting like the market leader. This worried Kalinske, but not as much after he was able to steal White over to Sega.
As the night wore on, the retailers looked for any possible opening to try to get White to come clean. Eventually, when Sega’s Richard Burns forced White into committing a so-called rite of passage (i.e. hazing of new employees), White was ready to give them a story. But it was not the one they had been requesting.
“We deserve to know!” one of the retailers exclaimed. “The guy was at Nintendo for six years. He ate, slept, and shat Mario. Then all of the sudden he’s out of there? How do we know he isn’t just some spy for Redmond? That this isn’t all part of some ruse?”
Kalinske looked to White. The guy kind of had a point.
It generally takes a lot of creativity to disprove the idea you’re a double agent, but White was up to the challenge. “You want to know how you can trust me?” White asked, climbing on top of the table. “Here’s how,” he said, unbuttoning his pants.
“Um, Bill,” Kalinske asked, “what are you doing there?”
White smirked at Kalinske and the others around the table, then dropped his pants and shorts and pointed his pale rump in the direction of Nintendo’s office in Redmond, Washington. Hey, they wanted a story, didn’t they?
Nilsen was less amused with White’s “story” than others were, but he knew that likely had less to do with the moon over Chicago and more to do with the crippling fatigue that he’d been feeling as of late. This new job as global marketing director was crushing him, so much so that he actually looked forward to the typically stressful Consumer Electronics Show as a chance to relax. Or, at the least, as a chance to stay in one place for more than forty-eight hours. The travel was killing him, all that time spent up in the air, and the worst part was that he was never able to sleep on planes. So his new job had basically induced a case of self-inflicted insomnia.
“I cannot express how nice it is to be having dinner here with you,” Nilsen said to the licensing and media folks from Viacom. Between Nickelodeon and MTV, these folks had been great partners with Sega over the years, and the relationship had grown beyond the superficial. It was genuinely nice to see them.
“We feel the same way,” said the president of Viacom’s new media group. “We really enjoy working with you.” The words put a smile on Nilsen’s face, but it wasn’t until midway through the meal that he realized how true the statement really was. “In fact,” he continued, “so much so, that we want you to come work for us.”
The question felt surreal, or maybe it was the concept of actually leaving Sega. Had he been asked six months ago, he would have laughed at the suggestion, but now he couldn’t help but entertain it. The job was in New York, which was less than ideal, but at least it was in one place. And it was with fun people and fun properties. But still, could he really, truly leave Sega? The company he had helped build, the family there that sometimes felt closer than blood relatives?
“I’m flattered,” Nilsen finally said. “I’ll need to think about it.”
“Of course, of course.”
As Nilsen finished his meal he still couldn’t believe that he was considering the offer, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that, Viacom or not, he couldn’t keep doing what he’d been doing these past six months.