As Console Wars wraps up, readers are led to one overwhelming conclusion: Under the unfettered leadership of Tom Kalinske, Sega of America thrived, was practically invincible, and would have continued to dominate the American video game market, if not for the meddling of a suddenly overzealous Sega of Japan. Harris tells us that every bad decision Sega made that resulted in a loss of market share—the ill-advised 32X add-on and the premature launch of the doomed Saturn console among them—was entirely within the purview of Sega's stubborn parent company, and was made despite Kalinske's protests. P

The narrative even goes so far as to suggest that the mere existence of Saturn's competition—the Nintendo 64 and Sony's original PlayStation—was Sega of Japan's fault. Kalinske, Harris tells us, orchestrated partnerships that would have essentially put the technology behind these into Sega products instead, but his Japanese bosses dismissed the plans with little to no explanation, forever dooming Sega into a distant third and, we're left on our own to conclude, ultimately out of the hardware business entirely.