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SEGA Announces Major Restructuring and Layoffs
Despite its overall business posting profits upwards of $200 million, SEGA Sammy has revealed that its North American and European operations spent more over the last year than they made back, losing the company $86 million. As usual, these developments were blamed on the tough economy and, as usual, SEGA has announced plans to shrink their operations.
By shifting their focus to digital content and time-tested franchises, SEGA hopes to turn things around. This means that games will be canceled, though no specific titles have been given, and people will lose their jobs. However, successful series like Sonic, Football Manager, Total War, and Aliens will continue to be unaffected by these developments.
Thankfully, Aliens: Colonial Marines for Wii U will most likely be spared… unlike the marines themselves
As for staffing cut-backs, layoffs will hit SEGA’s marketing, design, development, and social media departments. Also, the entirety of the North American QA department will be eliminated with European QA picking up the slack.
Source: IGN
Best Buy Sees Drop in Video Game Sales
SEGA wasn’t the only company with bad news. Best Buy has revealed that even though the company saw a slight boost in overall sales in the last quarter, its sales of games is continuing a downward trend from last quarter. Year over year, Best Buy’s entertainment department (games, movies, music, etc.) has declined 21 percent.
Despite an overall increase company-wide compared to last year, Best Buy is still struggling as a whole and further enforced this fact with the revelation that 50 of its US stores will close this year, with an additional 400 jobs being eliminated at the corporate level.
Source: Gamasutra
Euro WiiWare Demos Rise from the Dead
Demos of WiiWare games have always been short lived, giving gamers a brief chance to get an even briefer snippet of the games. However, Nintendo of Europe has re-added 30 demos to European Wii Shop Channels.
These Lazarus-demos include Bit.Trip.Beat, Cave Story, NyxQuest,and many other titles.
Source: Twitter
