Originally posted at DCS
Former Vice President of Strategic Planning and Corporate Affairs for Sega of America Charles Bellfield has passed away on Friday, November 15th 2013. VentureBeat reports that his brother Edward Bellfield shared the news on Facebook. Since then several other video game websites have shared the news – most comprehensively by Gamasutra. Although the cause of death has not been shared with the press.
Former Sega President Peter Moore described Bellfield as “the quintessential Englishman Abroad” as well as “a great friend, a wonderful personality.”
“Together we would take on Sony, joust with EA, and even battle with our own parent company back in Tokyo,” Moore said. “All with a sense of irreverence and good natured competitive spirit that Charlie and I believed embodied what Sega needed to be about. He was smart and mischievous, with a dry humor and a classic sense of right and wrong. Long after we parted ways at Sega, we were (and are) friends to the end. He was a friend and mentor to my children.
Bellfield and Moore were notably responsible for working on a manifesto in September 2000 that suggested the company would have a more prosperous future as a software developer instead of a hardware manufacturer.
At the time Bellfield was also the most public face of Sega and I remember reading numerous interviews that he gave to the press. The most memorably one was the one he did with Anthony Chau of IGNDC. After Moore cancelled Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast. It was up to Charles Bellfield to justify that decision to the press. In the same interview he spoke of the last batch of Dreamcast and specifically the last Dreamcast which was supposed to be more valuable than gold. I remember this interview because it was later revealed to have been signed by everyone involved with Dreamcast at Sega of America.
Unfortunately it never made it to retailers or maybe it was just a marketing stunt. I would like to think that some passionate Sega employee still has it and maybe one day we will get to see a photo of it.
Officially Bellfield was with Sega from 1998 to 2003, however he stated in the aforementioned IGN interview that he has been involved with Dreamcast since August 1995. According to his LinkedIn profile he was employed by NEC prior to working at Sega. NEC did manufacture the PowerVR chips for Dreamcast and Naomi so perhaps this is how his involvement with Dreamcast precedes his employment at Sega. Post Sega he worked as VP of Marketing at Capcom and CodeMaster. In 2008, he left the video game industry and worked with various companies, at the time of his death he was employed by internet radio company PURE North America where he was working since November 2009.