Today Sega announced it is shuttering its San Francisco office and more than 300 workers will be laid off in the business restructuring. According to the announcement, its distribution business for its software will be the most impacted, as Sega is streamlining business to move away from physical games and instead, Sega will focus on mobile and online PC games, which where the company believes the most growth can be had.
It’s been a rough year for Sega, despite the success of Alien: Isolation, the complete and utter failure of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on Wii U and Shattered Crystal on 3DS is seen as the precursor to this move. It’s likely we’ve seen the last of retail Sonic games for a while.
Voluntary retirement will be solicited in the aforementioned businesses to be withdrawn or consolidated and downsized, while at the same time personnel will be repositioned in digital games and growth areas of Group mainly as development personnel, in order to establish a structure which can constantly generate profits.
Sega’s PC business has been performing better lately thanks to acquisitions like Creative Assembly, who are responsible for the PC strategy series Total War. Are you disappointed with the news?
