[gryson]

Oops - made a mistake here. The American side wanted the PlayStation to be WHITE, not black. I went back and checked the book. Quote:

>First he [Michael Schulhof - CEO of Sony Corp of America] objected to the color of the console. [He] insisted that gray was unacceptable in the U.S. market, and that the console must be white. Neither did he like the design or the logo mark. Their approach was to object to everything on grounds such as the results of market research: "We can't accept such an unusual controller. The design is too small for American hands." What is more, they insisted that they would set the U.S. list price themselves and they disapproved of the name PlayStation. The "Play" in PlayStation, they said, was reminiscent of "Playboy" and might be misconstrued. With one issue after another, the criticism was relentless.

>...Maruyama carefully assessed the likelihood that U.S. management would respect the intentions of management in Japan. He concluded that it would be impossible for managers steeped in the conventions of the game industry, and he decided to replace the lot except for a select few. In January of 1996, Sony established subsidiary SCEI America in San Francisco, simultaneously replacing most of the managers and launching a new management team. Maruyama comments: "We swept the organization clean of all the old obstacles. We realized that we had to manage our own business."

I previously transcribed more of this excerpt here:

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?34167-Sega-and-...

And here is the news story about Michael Schulhof being forced to resign:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-12-06-19953400...