period to "muddy its waters" with a CD add-on, and highlighted some "gems" for the system, but that "the benefits offered by the Sega CD had to be balanced against the fact that the add-on more than doubled the price (and complexity) of the [Genesis]." In a separate article for 1Up.com, Parish praised the Sega CD's expansion of value to the Genesis. Writing for Retro Gamer, Damien McFerran cited various reasons for the Sega CD's limited sales, including its price, lack of significant enhancement to the Genesis, and that fact that it was not a standalone console. Retro Gamer writer Aaron Birch, defended the Sega CD as "ahead of its time" and said that game developers had failed to meet the potential of CD technology. Sega's poor support for the Sega CD has been criticized as the first step in the devaluation of the Sega brand. Writing for IGN, Buchanan said the Sega CD, released without a strong library of games, "looked like a strange, desperate move—something designed to nab some ink but without any real, thought-out strategy. Genesis owners that invested in the add-on were sorely disappointed, which undoubtedly helped sour the non-diehards on the brand." In GamePro'', Snow wrote that the Sega CD was the first of several poorly supported Sega systems which damaged the value of the brand and ultimately led to Sega's exit from the hardware market. Thorpe wrote that, while it was possible for Sega to have brushed off the Sega CD's failure, the failure of the Sega CD and the 32X together damaged faith in Sega's support for its platforms. Former Sega of America senior producer Scot Bayless attributes the unsuccessful market to a lack of direction from Sega with the add-on. According to Bayless, "It was a fundamental paradigm shift with almost no thought given to consequences. I honestly don't think anyone at Sega asked the most important question: 'Why?' There's a rule I developed during my time as an engineer in the military aviation business: never fall in love with your tech. I think that's where the Mega-CD went off the rails. The whole company fell in love with the idea without ever really asking how it would affect the games you made." Sega of America producer Michael Latham said he "loved" the Sega CD, and that it had been damaged by an abundance of "Hollywood interactive film games" instead of using