Bernie Stolar
American businessman
Bernard Stolar (October 9, 1946 – June 22, 2022) was an American businessman and a prominent figure in the video game industry for many years. Among several roles in the industry, he was a founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, essential to the launch of the original PlayStation, and president of Sega of America, where he helped lead the development of the Sega Dreamcast home console.
Early life and education
Stolar graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.
Career
In the late 1970s, Stolar worked at The Village Voice, as an editorial director. He joined Pacific Novelty Manufacturing, a coin-op machine company in 1981, as a salesperson, before he was hired by Atari in 1985 to run their own arcade game business. Later, Stolar was moved into Atari's home console division, where, in the early 1990s, he led development of the Atari Lynx handheld console.
Stolar was the first executive vice president and a founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he was integral in both the launch and building of the original PlayStation's game catalog. At Sony, Stolar signed many game franchises including Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld, Spyro and Battle Arena Toshinden. After leaving Sony, he accepted an offer to become president and chief operating officer at Sega of America, where he led the development and launch of the Dreamcast. One of Stolar's top moves was to acquire Visual Concepts for Sega of America and create 2K Sports.
The public source identifies “Bernie Stolar” as american businessman. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bernie, Stolar and American.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bernie Stolar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.