Japanese entertainment company Sega Sammy today lowered its earnings forecast for the year and announced it would be offering voluntary retirement to roughly 200 employees due to lackluster performance of Sammy's traditional pachinko/pachislot businesses.
This is notable because it fleshes out a trend: Sega Sammy is bleeding money from its gambling machine business, which has been underperforming for at least a year.
Meanwhile, what developers traditionally think of as "Sega" -- the segments of Sega Sammy's "entertainment contents" business that encompass video game companies like Atlus, Creative Assembly and Sega of America -- has actually been performing well.
But after a reivew of Sega Sammy's pachinko/pachislot sales schedule, the company today slashed its predicted profits for the past six months by roughly 57 percent, down to 6 billion yen (~$50 million USD) from the 14 billion yen (~$116.7 million USD) it had originally forecast.
In a press release announcing the change Sega Sammy also laid out a plan to improve profitability by cutting jobs, as it plans to offer voluntary retirement to roughly 200 employees of Taiyo, a subsidiary of Sega Sammy that's part of its pachinko division.
Earlier this year the company asked 300 employees to retire, primarily from its video game and arcade business divisions.