You make a great point by demystifying the language I used -- admittedly, it's difficult not to make things seem too starry-eyed when you're talking about a childhood favorite. Still, although every company is after a profit, I don't think it's completely naive to take notice of the general mentality that the company seems to embody in their business. You can go too far in this and become a bleary-eyed fanboy, and Sega does have plenty of moments that don't really inspire the kind of "SEGA, SEGA, RAH-RAH-RAH!" sentiment I poured on in my last post. You're right, the "working class hero" archetype could become a bit much...
But! If I lay out exhibit A: Segagaga, exhibit B: Rez, exhibit C: Cooperation with Kenji Eno on Real Sound: Regret of the Wind, I think that we see a company which tried to create a sustainable business around something so much more human and artistic than anything coming from the Sony camp (especially at that time) that there's almost no comparing them in this regard whatsoever. The honest, uncontrived self-aware and conversational nature of Segagaga is still practically unparalleled in its approach of pulling all the corporate veneer off the company that made it and showing you the folks at Sega for who they really were. There are two types of companies: those that use creativity to promote their business, and those that use business to promote their creativity -- the former does NOT make a game like "Rez". Even a passing interest in something so unmarketable and borderline games-as-charity as Real Sound puts a company under a unique classification in my eyes. They were a company that were so blow-your-brains-out amazing on an artistic level that one can't help but think it was part of the reason their business sense was so unbelievably broken -- I can't help but find something admirable and human about that. I mean, you look at the mentality, quotes, and stories about the businessman whose money backed them almost entirely, Isao Okawa, an eccentric multi-millionaire, and you realize that he just plain "loved/believed in/however you want to phrase it" the company and did everything in his power (and his wallet) to keep them going even when it made no business sense whatsoever to do so, and forgave their debts to him just because he... I don't know, because there was a place in his heart for Sega, I guess. It's things like this that make me see Sega as having been very much unique from the average company.
http://wiki.igda.org/Memorials/Isao_OkawaAnyway, I do understand what you're saying, and you bring up some good points about some of Sony's better characteristics (I'd had no idea about Net Yaroze, for instance), and you're absolutely right in pointing out that Sega (and Nintendo's) awkward hardware and strategies did give Sony the perfect opportunity to make a name for themselves in video games. However, I don't see how logical business sense and vertically-integrated hardware production capabilities equates to anything I'd consider consequential on an artistic level, or "a soul". Actually, although I'm entirely to blame for their use in this conversation thus far, let's move away from words like "soul" or "passion" -- they make it too difficult to parse through this already subjective matter objectively.
As Randroid touched on as well, I have a similarly different interpretation than yours regarding the exclusives coming as a result of their superior product rather than just plain having a ton of money to throw around. Sure, the difficult Saturn architecture didn't help and you raise a valid point there, but you can still find articles on Sony out-bidding Sega for exclusive rights to previously multi-platform titles in the archives of old guard video gaming news sites to this day.
In any event, although I just banned "soul" from my vocabulary, I should clarify that when I said "soulless" I didn't mean it to mean "evil", so much as just that I can't find anything that I could identify as anything so lofty as a "soul" in the company. It's just that a company made up of (in my opinion) the most creative, forward-thinking, and damn loveable game artists trying to be marketed and directed by the batshit-craziest risk-taking, most inferiority complex-ridden, utterly incomprehensible salarymen seems capable of making me speak in sparkly-eyed words like "soul" because that's so much more relatable and human and interesting. Sony, sure they're not "evil", but they are business-driven to the point that I don't find them relatable or defensible in terms of their contribution to the industry as an artistic medium whatsoever. They've been great for the business and popularity of games, for certain, but despite their minor creative contributions and periodic associations with true artists in the field, it has not ultimately served those things in and of themselves -- they have absolutely not created a fertile environment for off-the-wall creativity in games.
Business just has some really unfortunate side-effects. Sure, PlayStation as a brand is far from all bad, but overall it's a great loss for the creative side of the industry that Sony and Microsoft's business practices and expectations have lead industry standards rather than one which promotes competitive co-existence with smaller upstart companies. Sure, Sega was a business overall, but I didn't see Sega of America rushing to snuff out NEC/Hudson when the Turbo was failing to take hold in the market like Sony did with the Dreamcast. I mean honestly, their behavior during that time is still utterly baffling to me -- I mean, yes, I know they're a business, but WHY go through all that effort to pulverize a complete non-threat of a company like that when they're after a niche market you don't cater to in the first place? Sure, "business is business" is the mantra and people follow it, but let's just set precedents aside for a moment and look at that situation -- on a logical, rational level was that not just greedy as fuck? And to do that to a company that you had worked with five years before, no less? That's exactly what I'm talking about -- the people making the decisions probably didn't even know about the ImageSoft projects to begin with -- they're too massive and creatively placeless to keep up with things like that, and that's why I don't trust a company that gargantuan and scatter-brained in a creative field. No stream of consciousness whatsoever.
Haha, clearly the main issue for me is that I am NOT a businessman.
