Sega of America president in ‘really not sure if our most legendary creator works here any more’ shocker. Read and weep.

We think this is news. Like, if this were President Bush it would be news. Not that Simon Jeffery should be compared to President Bush, as he’s only president of Sega America, but as gaffs go this is a good ’un.

Top news on the US websites this morning is that Yu Suzuki is still an employee at Sega. Why is this news? First a bit of background. Yu Suzuki is arguably Sega’s most important creative talent – if not the man upon whose games Sega has been built. Titles such as: Outrun, Super Hang On, Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter and the ground-breaking Shenmue all came from Suzuki. He is to Sega what Shigeru Miyamoto is to Nintendo. He didn’t introduce Sonic, but then Miyamoto didn’t do Metroid either. So fair and square.

Now, back to Simon Jeffery. On Monday an interview with the Sega chief was posted by Brandon Sheffield on games industry website Gamasutra.com. Partway through the interview the conversation ran like this:

Gamasutra: Speaking of names, what has happened to Yu Suzuki?
Simon Jeffery: Last I heard he was doing some online stuff in China.

GS: He's spearheaded an arcade racing title. Is he just really off in his own world?
SJ: Yeah. He's kind of his own man right now. Every now and again, he'll come up with an idea, and I don't think anything has come out of that yet, but we're still working with him. He's not an employee anymore, but...

Gamasutra: I wasn't sure if he was still actually a Sega employee.
SJ: Not as far as I know.

Wow! News to everyone, why hasn’t there been an announcement of some kind? Well, perhaps because Mr Suzuki is still at Sega after all. In fact… well, why don’t we let Jeffery explain in his corrective statement issued to Gamasutra yesterday: "I can safely say that Yu Suzuki is in fact still a Sega employee, [he] is a Creative Officer of Sega Corp."

Bum tsch!

According to Gamasutra, Suzuki is currently working in China on an online version of the open world RPG Shenmue and a touch-screen arcade game called Psy-Phi.

Quite possibly the next big things for Sega…