Sega Sammy Holdings has released the financial results for the nine months ending December 2008, and the numbers are hard.
A loss of USD 119 million in total across the business is reported, meaning overall revenues fell 15.4 percent, though this is less than the 173m loss in the same period the previous year.
Sega's Consumer Business division (in charge of video game development), suffered an operating loss of 61.4m on net sales of 1.06bn. 21 million games were sold worldwide -- 9.1m in Europe, 8.8 in the States, and 3.1 in Japan plus other regions.
With the numbers comes a revised forecast, and the company bracing for a $235m loss next month.
The results' results dictate Sega will have to trim operations quite heavily, starting with 110 of their Japanese arcade centres being sold or closed. Next is the lay-off of 560 (18%) of its employees, though they are kind enough to do this on a temporarily volunteer basis. Lastly, for both Sega and Sammy a 20% reduction will be seen in the R&D department, "by consolidating titles to be developed". In other words, say goodbye to some previously planned titles.
Now where's that Buy-Sega-a-Dreamcast-2 Fund...
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