Sega to close five European, Australian offices

[Escaflowne2001]

Sega will shut down five publishing offices on July 1, the firm announced today, and will be outsourcing distribution in these regions to third parties. The move will not affect developers, who continue to work on Sega's key titles.

"Sega is entering a new and exciting phase that will position the company as a content led organisation maximising sales with strong and balanced IP such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Football Manager and the Aliens franchise," Sega Europe COO Jurgen Post said in the company's announcement. "The company will benefit from a clear focus and realigned strategy for our digital business and packaged goods and we are confident that this will lead to a successful future."

The territories to be shuttered are France, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Benelux. Distribution responsibilities from the five offices will be assumed by Koch Media, Level03 Distribution, and 5 Star Games, while all other territories will continue to be managed by Sega's European headquarters in London.

The move comes after an announcement earlier in the year that Sega was halving its expected revenue, predicting losses of $86.4 million. It also cancelled several unnamed titles in response to the "rapid change" occurring in the gaming market.

Sega has confirmed that its plans for distribution and promotion of London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games will not change, and the game will be released as planned at the end of June.

Ouch! that must be alot of jobs.

[justin_credible]

Sega is on their death bed. Can't say I'm too sad looking at the overall quality of games since they've gone third party. Platinum Games has made some good stuff lately though I'd like to see them survive. Other than that, don't care.

[Northeastmonk]

Sega is a great franchise with about the same quality as Nintendo. Today's market is so picky until I wouldn't be shocked if they shut down completely. Its total BS if they fall like Atari.

[Escaflowne2001]

Really..? Outside of Yakuza series' I can't think of any decent SEGA developed games that are of high quality just have been released in US/EU recently. There are a few games like 7th Dragon, Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Shining Wind/Hearts that I wanted to play but they didn't bother with.

The only other ones are the titles developed by Platinum Games which have been good.

[Badrats Studio]

They need to get back on their roots.

Can be start by changing head honchos ; preferably young guns like that Toshihiro Nagoshi taking leads on the company.

[Alucard]

They'd be so screwed if they didnt have Total War and Football manager series.

[Nem]

...and Sonic.

I still say it would be best if nintendo or sony (i know, they are broke) bought them.

The problem is the old SEGA died, and to be honest, the lack of quality and direction in their games is largely due to the poor enix management after the merger, like were seeing now.

I mean... they have Yu suzuki and they completely ignored him. They fired great talent like Yuji Naka. It all went to hell. The current SEGA has no creative direction.

In second thought, i hope they go under, all i want is for someone to pick up the great IP's they have and make proper new games.

[eastx]

SEGA may not be growing, but they're poised to do really well after trimming their operations down a bit. They have several good games coming up and they're doing great things with downloadable games as well. It's a shame when companies have to cut back instead of expanding, but there's no danger of SEGA going away anytime soon.

[Northeastmonk]

Originally Posted by Nem

...and Sonic.

I still say it would be best if nintendo or sony (i know, they are broke) bought them.

The problem is the old SEGA died, and to be honest, the lack of quality and direction in their games is largely due to the poor enix management after the merger, like were seeing now.

I mean... they have Yu suzuki and they completely ignored him. They fired great talent like Yuji Naka. It all went to hell. The current SEGA has no creative direction.

In second thought, i hope they go under, all i want is for someone to pick up the great IP's they have and make proper new games.

That's what I mean; Sega has a lot of great IPs. But they don't have a develop team to approach the possibilities it seems. Aka Sonic. Like Myamoto and Mario. There are probably less then there were a decade ago, but there is always room to expand and explore new concepts. It just may be on a smaller scale.

Same with Yuji Naka; he had not done a lot of Sonic in a long time and look at the crap thats been coming out outside of Generations, which still felt a little distant from the past. Still good.

[Alucard]

They just need smarter people in charge. Someone needs to buy them and say, You're making a Dragoon saga 2 rpg. The sub heads will be all like oh no we want to make something else, and the new owner will be all like STFU this is why you've had issues cause you're STUPID

[Escaflowne2001]

Originally Posted by eastx

but there's no danger of SEGA going away anytime soon.

Maybe but the SEGA/Sammy buyout never quite produced the mega publisher to was meant to way back in 2004.

[Nem]

Originally Posted by Northeastmonk

That's what I mean; Sega has a lot of great IPs. But they don't have a develop team to approach the possibilities it seems. Aka Sonic. Like Myamoto and Mario. There are probably less then there were a decade ago, but there is always room to expand and explore new concepts. It just may be on a smaller scale.

Same with Yuji Naka; he had not done a lot of Sonic in a long time and look at the crap thats been coming out outside of Generations, which still felt a little distant from the past. Still good.

If Naka had stayed i bet we would've had Sonic Adventure 3 instead of all the crap that came out afterwards.
For me 3D sonic was only good in the adventure series. Sonic adventure 2 is no doubt the best 3D Sonic gameplay there is.

After that Naka left and all we got was turds. Sonic generations is only half good because everyone basically demanded them to go back to 2D cause they kept failing with the 3D.

But seriously, Sonic team had status has a great developers and you could trust anything they did was a quality product. During the Saturn era they did alot of good games like Nights, burning rangers, later on the dreamcast and DC they made the sonic adventure series and Billy hatcher... after that it ended. The current leader of Sonic team doesnt seem to care very much either. He just wants to milk Sonic to extintion with turd games.

[Zack]

trimmin the fat