*UPDATE* Rumor: SEGA shutting down SEGA Europe, last console game to be shown at E3

UPDATE: Community Manager at Sega of America Clumsyorchild and Studio director at Sports Interactive Miles Jacobson are tweeting that these rumors are false.

Wow. It’s that time of year; E3 is around the corner, and that means it’s time to see some  rumors. This one doesn’t sound too outrageous due to all the lay offs that happened a few months back. Not only that, SEGA Europe doesn’t have community managers. Does this mean SEGA Europe will be shutting down and that SEGA will stop making retail games? The rumor states that SEGA will focus on mobile and tablet games. It also says their last big AAA title will be announced at E3, and will be the Creative Assembly’s unannounced Alien game.

What do I think? I think it’s bullshit. First of all, Europe is where SEGA does best. You will be asking yourself why SEGA would fire their European community managers, but keep the US ones? Well, we talked about this awhile back, it’s streamlining. SEGA Europe and America are now SEGA West. Most big gaming events are in America, so if SEGA is saving dollars, it would make sense to leave the American team. Do you also think that a company like SEGA can live off of $3 dollar mobile games? I do think SEGA will be careful as to what they develop as a retail game. Which to me is fine, SEGA releases too many games that don’t do so well and should have been canceled long ago. Better quality equals better sales. See 2K Games and Rockstar, both publishers (which are both a branch of Take Two) have postponed titles to work and make them great. Some even got postponed over a year.

Gamekyo is the site that ran the rumor, below is what they said (it’s translated).

“Sega Europe to announce its closing?

On the eve of E3 2012, we are able to inform you, according to our credible sources, that Sega Europe will be finally closed in the coming months as well as all the local branches in Europe like Sega France. This is partly a consequence of the ineffectiveness of Sega’s strategy over the past several years of developing games by western developers. At the same time, Sega will also announce, according to these sources, they will no longer develop AAA games on consoles, but will focus on digital games for cell phones and notably tablets. Sega’s last big title developed by Creative Assembly will be presented at E3 2012 in a few days. Furthermore, remember that Sega has announced they will not be at Gamescom 2012.”

What do you guys think?

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24 responses to “*UPDATE* Rumor: SEGA shutting down SEGA Europe, last console game to be shown at E3

  1. Kori-Maru says:

    Yeah, I believe that rumor is bullshit. I don’t wanna play awesome Sega games on my tablet or my crappy phone. It just won’t feel right.

  2. moto says:

    i’ll buy a downsizing of sega eu coming.

    but tablets/phones only?

    i can see that being the end of the company. what IP do they have thats going to light the charts on fire on the app store? the tablet market is in baby phase, its not a mature marketplace unless your entire business is ipad based.

    sonic and monkey ball have been moderate hits on the app store. supposedly they have some rpg on the app store that does well overseas? football manager “could” do fine… but i can’t see it hitting the same numbers.

    theres companies with 50 employees in SF who produce bigger product than what sega has on the app store.

    i just can’t buy it, if true it would be a complete gutting of the company and destroy what value is left. sammy would have to funnel funds into mobile acquisitions, which right now are over valued and price competitive if you go for a popular mobile studio. sega has little IP or footprint into f2p.

    honestly, can sony or nintendo just pony up and acquire sega already. it has a huge IP catalog. huge back log of product. name. its prime. i think the better question to ask at this time is what value is sega to sammy anymore?

    i see very few positives to the deal with sammy anymore. thats dangerous for the future of sega, but why not just cut it off and find a outside buyer in the industry who will put a fair $ value on sega. at this point the best option for sammy and sega seems to be some type of separation while theres selling upside for sammy.

    • Instigator says:

      Why the hell would you want Nintendo or Sony to buy SEGA? That would be utter shit and be the death of them. It’s bad enough with them being in this worthless union with Sammy, SEGA was always much better when they were on their own and all the biggest successess were when they worked alone too. Fuck unions and aquisitions.

  3. Orta says:

    It’s bullshit. Sonic is just too big, for example. Also, I was shown a job announcement for Portuguese language testers the other day. Sega never released a game in Portuguese, like ever, apart from Football Manager. How can they be hiring if the branch is closing?

  4. nuckles87 says:

    This rumor is, at best, mistranslated, and at worst bullshit. The source is French, and I believe it’s referring in it’s entirety to SEGA Europe, not SEGA as a whole. Companies just don’t make changes THIS stark, unless they are incredibly desperate, which SEGA just isn’t.

  5. ezodagrom says:

    That rumour sounds like complete BS, the Total War and Football Manager series are still quite successful, I don’t believe SEGA would close every European branch while those 2 titles remain successful.

  6. Aki-at says:

    It sounds like a dodgy football transfer rumour. 1 + 1 does not equal 4.

    The ineffectiveness of their Western strategy? SEGA Europe has both Football Manager and Total War (Two titles that SEGA mentioned would still be released) that also happen to sell in the region of the Yakuza series. Furthermore Sumo is about to showcase their third superstar title, SEGA Europe has hardly been ineffective.

    Also SEGA Europe to cease console game development? Do they even know their last game on HD consoles was ages ago? They might not develop another console game for a few years regardless and the journalist here would claim their source was correct. I mean I can count them off my hand, Viking, Stormrise, Total War Warrior and SEGA Rally Revo.

    Quite suspicious about this one.

  7. SirTaiginator says:

    Did Gamekyo provide any sources in their artical at all? Any official quotes or announcements or any other site that is saying the same stuff? If not then it just sounds like nothing more than Gamekyo’s inept opinion.

  8. Sharky says:

    Seems hugely unlikely, they have recently been growing The Creative Assembly I doubt they would shut it down.

    Not to mention games Total War and Football Manager are some of Segas biggest sellers.

  9. pso2love says:

    So, is SEGA going to mention Phantasy Star Online 2 at E3? Slap someone if they don’t.

  10. Hitrax says:

    It’s provable that this rumour is obvious complete nonsense, but the question still remains on how this trash became worthy to even become a rumour, the source lead for it links straight to Gamekyo the French site and now the world media seems to have copied them instantly without proof on anything, SEGA didn’t even say a word that suggested this was going to happen, could it really have just only been a mis-translation? Thankfully it was shot down straight away as being complete false but some are still talking like it is happening, unaware that it’s since been destroyed as a rumour.

  11. SkyBlue says:

    The news mongers should do more research regarding how to make a believeable rumour.

    SEGA have sold more software in Europe then america and even Japan…so…yeah, nice try whoever made that rumour…must try harder.

    **Someone obviously has a bone to pick with SEGA west.**

  12. peachlife says:

    hopefully these rumours can serve as a warning sign to us sega fans to really support their products,by actually buying them if we dont ever want such a painful reality to ever exist. These rumours would not exist if there werent some element of truth… No smoke without fire

    • radrappy says:

      sorry, you, me, or whatever handful of sega fans you could scrounge up couldn’t move enough copies to warrant notice. This situation is sega’s fault and theirs alone. Better products and better business strategies are what will save this company, not fan involvement.

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