Sega has been out of the console game for a while now. The company announced back in 2001 that it would only be focusing on its software moving forward in light of its multiple recent hardware failures between the Dreamcast, the Saturn, and also handhelds like the Game Gear and Nomad. Apparently, though, that's not what Sega thought at first. A recently leaked document from the company shows a surprising amount of confidence in the Saturn in its fight against Sony's behemoth console debut, the PlayStation.
The leaked document is a massive 272-page PDF that began circulating around the internet recently. It reveals a lot of information about Sega and the Saturn at the time, including sales, email correspondence, and the poor retail margins that many stores were having to deal with. The strangest detail of the leak is some of the talk about how well the Sega Saturn was doing in comparison to the PlayStation. An email from Tom Kalinske, former CEO of Sega of America, to other major Sega execs at the time reads, "We are killing Sony. In every store, Saturn hardware is sold out and there are stacks of PlayStation." Kalinske then asks the email group how best that success can be shown at E3 so that more people would grow confident in the Saturn's eventual success in the US.
