SEGA West lays-off 73 staffers through restructuring

Mike Hayes, president of SEGA West, has confirmed that the company is going through a restructuring process, resulting in the loss of 73 jobs across Europe and North America.

Speaking with IndustryGamers, Hayes said 36 staff in San Francisco and 37 in London, 12 percent of West's workforce, have lost their jobs.

The San Francisco outfit will now focus on digitally products for PC, console and mobile, while Europe will continuing with "traditional package goods."

“We've been going through the planning process the past 6 months, taking a look at the future of the market and where we think our investments need to be," said Hayes. "It's no surprise that the share of digital is growing as an overall part of the video game business, so we decided we have to invest more in that specific area, and notably, we had to get our business groups appropriately sorted to provide the right focus.

"Traditionally, Sega of America and Sega Europe had been running a dual company where both would look at traditional goods and both would look at the digital side. What we decided to do is to make San Francisco the kind of hub for our digital efforts, and therefore make London the hub for the traditional packaged goods part.

"I would stress, however, that this is very much administrative reorganization, because clearly we want to be very successful with digital globally. Likewise, we want to continue to be successful with traditional goods. So the reorganization allows us to be much more efficient in terms of our costs, but probably more importantly in the way that we can look at the future business."

Meanwhile, SEGA is to announce Natal and Move games during E3, and has not sworn off Mature games completely.

This is all according to Hayes.

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