Sega offering ‘voluntary retirement’ to 200 staff

Sega is set to offer 200 employees ‘voluntary retirement’ as it aims to improve profitability.

The publisher expects to make a loss of £9.85m for the second quarter of the 2015 financial year. It has put much of this down to the delay of the release of its new pachislot and pachinko titles and to money set aside for early retirements. It stated however that the reduction of expenses resulting from losing staff could save it £10.9m a year starting from March 2016.

It has adjusted its operating income expectations for the first half of the current fiscal year ending September 30th to £32.8bn yen from £76.6m, a fall of 57 per cent.

Sega has noted that in its digital games business, titles such as Hortensia Saga, Monster Gear and Sen-no- kaizoku have performed well, on top of strong revenues from some existing titles. It therefore expects to continue to bring in profits in this area from the third quarter onwards.

At present there are no plans to alter its forecast for the full financial year.