Simon Jeffery

From Sega Retro

Simon Jeffrey.jpg
Simon Jeffery
Company(ies): Sega of America
Role(s): Executive


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Simon Jeffery was president of Sega of America from 2003 to 2009. He was president of LucasArts between 2000 and 2003, and a director at the company for three years prior.

Jeffery's main accomplishment during his tenure at LucasArts was forging new relations with external developers, such as Planet Moon Studios, The Collective, Raven Software and BioWare.

However, he failed to achieve his goal of turning around a creative slump at the company. According to Jeffery LucasArts had too heavily relied on its Star Wars license, but successful new IP failed to materialize. Games such as Gladius and RTX Red Rock did not achieve critical acclaim or great sales; follow-ups to classic LucasArts adventure games, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels and Sam & Max Freelance Police were cancelled, to much dismay of the fans. (An online petition to save Freelance Police got over 31000 signatures.)

Prior to joining LucasArts Jeffery worked in a number of marketing, business and development roles for Virgin Interactive and Electronic Arts.

At Sega, Jeffery plans to recruit Western development houses to work with Japanese Sega IP and strengthening Sega's game production in the West in general. [1]

In August 2007, Jeffrey was interviewed by BusinessWeek magazine, which had the following lines:

Jeffery is looking beyond Sonic, which he says is "an amazing recruitment vehicle" for younger gamers but "loses its cool factor when you get about 12 years old."

This assumption about Sonic fans set off waves of protest in the Sonic scene, and in October 2007, Jeffrey responded with an interview with The Sonic Stadium's Dreadknux.

In mid-June 2009, it was announced that Simon Jeffery would be leaving Sega.[2] He was replaced with Sega of Europe's Chief Operating Officer, Mike Hayes.[3]

Production history

References


Presidents of Sega Enterprises USA
Gene Lipkin (1985-1986) | Ned DeWitt | Tom Petit (1988-1994) | Alan Stone (1994-1996) | Howell Ivy (1996-2004) |

Co-president: David Rosen (1985-1996)

Presidents of Sega of America
Bruce Lowry (1986-1989) | | Michael Katz (1989-1990) | Tom Kalinske (1990-1996) | Bernie Stolar (1998-1999) | Peter Moore (1999-2003) | Hideaki Irie (2003-2005) | Simon Jeffery (2005-2009) | Mike Hayes (2009-2012) | John Cheng (2012-2018) | Ian Curran (2018)

Co-president: David Rosen (1986-1996)