Sega Downsizing Announcement: My Thoughts

Social networks are ablaze right now with the unfortunate news of Sega's plan to increase profitability by cutting approximately 300 jobs and focusing their game development efforts towards mobile gaming and digital PC distribution.

Before I continue I first want to mention how very sorry I am to hear of the downsizing. I sincerely hope that those affected by the job cuts are able to transition to new careers quickly and easily. Hopefully Sega will do the right thing and offer placement assistance for those that need it. As an employee of a company that has undergone two mergers in the past 10 years, I know first hand how stressful an announcement like this can be. It's hard to continue to do your best at work knowing that any day now your position could get the axe. I wish the very best to those affected by the announcement.

Here is the announcement itself, click to enlarge:

Once again, I'm sure this is hard news for any of Sega's employees to receive. That being said, I can see how this makes sense from a business stand point. In the past few years, Sega's more diverse and successful offerings have been on the PC platform with games like the Total War series, Phantasy Star Online 2, Alien Isolation and Football Manager. While some of those have been released for consoles as well, they usually see the most profit from the Sonic series on the console front.

One could speculate that the last few major Sonic entries being Wii U exclusives had a hand in their less than desirable console title sales. I'll admit myself that I still have no desire to own a Wii U until there's a significant price drop on it. However if those Sonic titles were available on an Xbox or Playstation machine I would most definitely own them. I'm sure I'm not the only person that feels this way about those titles.

I know there are a lot of people out there submitting the argument that their poor financial performance on console titles is because of their focus on Sonic the Hedgehog instead of their other IPs. The truth is that Sonic has performed consistently better since the Dreamcast days than their other IPs. I want a Shenmue sequel just as much as the next person, but the sales were never really there to make it worth pursuing further. Sega is a business and at the end of the day your wallet talks much louder than whatever happens to be trending on a social feed. (I have more to rant about this in an upcoming post involving game series that fans beg for but then just don't purchase, like Mega Man for example).

At the end of the day, I feel like this is probably the right thing to happen for Sega to continue being profitable. I wish this refocusing of the company didn't have to include the loss of jobs though, that's certainly the worst part about this news. I'll be looking forward to what they come up with as they focus more on the PC platform, where there seems to be a more accepting market of their non Sonic efforts.

Thanks for reading!