Sega doors are closing around Europe

Sega have announced what many were suspecting for a few weeks now. In an attempt to restructure their business, the company have announced closures in offices through out Europe. France, Germany, Spain, Australia and Benelux are being closed and the marketing for games will be handed to local businesses. Sega will now be focusing on digital releases for their games rather than the traditional boxed retail format.

“We’ve tried with a lot of products to break new IP or new brands into the market but we haven’t succeeded,” said Sega Europe’s COO Jurgen Post to MCV, he continued “Some categories are just not working in the market anymore. Titles like Iron Man 2 or other film licences, they don’t work.

“Then we tried with new IP; again it’s very tough to get into the market so we basically decided to stop that kind of project because it just takes so much money out of the company. You have to invest in the development and then you have to invest in the marketing and even then it’s still a big gamble.

It remains unclear what will happen to titles already in development such as Anarchy Reigns – presumably they will be handed to the local marketing teams to deliver into shops, but Sega will now only focus on “Four Pillars” of their revenue for boxed retail games: Sega, Football Manager, Total War and Aliens.

Any other game Sega make or publish will only be available for downloading to minimise risk to profitability. This is a shame Sega are taking this approach as exploring new series and stories is what makes video games a diverse industry. While reoccurring series games are fine, it does mean there is less of a chance of seeing new games from studios which created classics such as Power Stone or Crazy Taxi.