Sega to Cut Unknown Number of Jobs

When you hear the name Sega the odds are good that you probably think of a video game, and in a lot of ways you are right, but the company is a lot more than Sonic The Hedgehog. The company’s American branch describes itself in the following terms, “SEGA® of America, Inc. is the American arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA® Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment. SEGA of America’s Web site is located at www.sega.com”

Well it looks like Sega is getting ready to get rid of workers on not one, but two different continents. According to reports the company is getting rid of staff in both the United States and in France. For the time being the company is not putting out any official reports about the loss of the jobs, so most of the information is coming from third party reports.

The loss of the jobs is not completely unexpected. The company announced a significant fiscal loss in recent months. For the 2011-2012 fiscal year of the company they losses totaled roughly $86.4 million, which is enough to make any company cringe. The company attributed the loss of the jobs to one simple thing, poor sales, the company has shown a decrease in the number of units sold across many of its games.

As at least some of the layoffs were done in the USA the company may have to file for a mass layoff action, when they make the job cuts to come official. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The company’s latest reports on the news section of the US version of the Sega site was a release not about the cuts to the workforce of the company, but a look at one of the newest games to come out of the company. The release reads, “SEGA^® of America, Inc., Gearbox Software and Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products today announced a Collector’s Edition and a GameStop-exclusive pre-order offer for its highly anticipated blockbuster Aliens: Colonial Marines™ video game, launching February 12, 2013 worldwide. Offering players a multitude of unique and exclusive content from the ALIENS universe, including four playable characters from the original 1986 movie for competitive multiplayer, the Collector’s Edition and the GameStop exclusive are available for pre-order today.”

It looks like the company is looking to boost sales, which would help them to prevent future layoffs, and perhaps even bring back some of the soon to be displaced workers.