Tom Kalinske
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Ex-Sega boss Tom Kalinske rattles off the lessons from decades of brand mastery

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Click here for all of GamesBeat’s coverage of the 2015 DICE Summit.

LAS VEGAS — Tom Kalinske has been in the middle of a lot of brand wars. But he’ll be fondly remembered in the video game industry for his efforts to build a brand for the Sega Genesis game machine during the console wars of the 1980s and 1990s — and for taking on the Nintendo juggernaut.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.