The layoffs would amount to around 560 employees worldwide and are expected to come into effect before the end of the company's fiscal year ending on 31st March 2009. The company expects these workforce cuts to save around $55 million in labour costs in its next financial year.
The publisher's research and development budget for arcade and consumer titles will be cut by around 20 percent as well - it will achieve this by consolidating its portfolio of titles being developed and also increasing the ratio of in-house developed titles to those currently outsourced.
In other words, this probably means Sega will cut the number of outsourced game development projects significantly while keeping in-house titles reasonably stable. But that's not to say there won't be development cutbacks internally as well, as suggested by the major workforce cuts.
Sega cuts 560 jobs, axes games
Posted on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 0:00 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck