Sega Announce Restructure, Plans To Increase Focus On Downloadable Games

Today, Sega have announced a company restructure spanning across their major studios in San Francisco and London, sadly resulting in the redundancy of 73 jobs between them. While Sega are remaining profitable, this comes as a result of a desire to increase focus on Digital Platforms and Downloadable , with the San Francisco office now exclusively working on downloadable for the company, now known as the Digital Division, while the London Office is now Sega’s administrative hub, which will handle console and PC .

Speaking about the decision to extend their involvement among digital platforms to gaming site 1UP, Sega Europe and America CEO Mike Hayes said "The new focus on digital media is part of our ongoing expansion, which is great. We have a very strong base now in the traditional business. We still want to grow, we still want to be very competitive, but in terms of development and growing our overall market share, part of that sort of journey for Sega, sort of like chapter two, is this big digital arena.”

Commenting on the redundancies, Mike Hayes said "There was a lot of duality; there was a lot of doing the same work twice. There was a lot of copying between both San Francisco and London. So it's kind of a natural question of how do we become more efficient and affective as an operation, and that's what the exercise has been.”

Speaking further, he said that “We do not underestimate the continuing importance and relevance of what we call the traditional packaged goods business. That's still earning the bulk of dollars, and that's still a very important part of investment for us. That's a really important part of the business for us and will remain so, we guess, for many years to come”, affirming that said Sega will remain committed to traditional retail releases on consoles and the PC as a primary focus for the company alongside the expanded focus for digital releases.

Expect more news regarding the restructure soon, as 1UP will be releasing a full interview with Mike Hayes tomorrow

Source 1 and Source 2

I wonder what else they have planned for digital downloads other than Sonic 4. Thanks for doing the news Terra. =)

Not a problem Soaring. Happy to help

This is good.

More support for VC and XBLA. Possibly the PSN.

They still have a handful of great games to be released.

This should benefit all sections. Hopefully, this means increase Virtual Console support and better WiiWare support. PSN support would be nice as well.