This week sees more unfortunate news for Sega, who confirmed this morning that they will be shutting down their offices in France, Germany, Spain, Australia and Benelux, and partnering with other publishers to release their games in those territories instead.
Koch Media will be assisting Sega with distribution of their packaged games in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and Spain. Meanwhile, Level03 Distribution and 5 Star Games will help with distribution across Benelux and Australia respectively. These changes will be in effect as of July 1st, and will be overseen by Sega Europe’s main headquarters in London.
As previously reported, Sega will be shifting their focus to developing digital and social games for mobiles, smartphones and PCs, and lowering their output of packaged games. To put this in perspective, Sega sold 17.2 million copies of packaged games worldwide during their last fiscal year. This year, they estimate they’ll only be selling 8.9 million packaged games globally.
The packaged games that are developed and released will focus primarily on brands that Sega feel are strong enough. As mentioned in past reports, these will include Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Football Manager and the Aliens franchise. That said, Sega still plan to publish PlatinumGames’ Anarchy Reigns, an online multiplayer brawler, sometime in Q1 2013.
