Author: John Scalzo

It isn’t the end for British retailer GAME. The remaining 333 GAME stores located in the United Kingdom have been purchased by Baker Acquisitions, meaning that roughly 3,200 employees will remain employed and able to properly pester British game buyers into pre-order something for the forseeable future. Baker’s acquisition of GAME’s UK-based stores has also pulled the retailer out of adminstration (the British equaivalent to bankruptcy).

Henry Jackson, Managing Partner of Baker parent company OpCapita said, “We are pleased to have reached agreement with the Administrator. We strongly believe there is a place on the high street for a video gaming specialist and GAME is the leading brand in a £2.8 billion market in the UK. We have assembled a strong team of experienced industry operators to implement the programme of operational change that is needed. There is a huge amount to do but we look forward to the challenge of restoring GAME’s fortunes in partnership with its employees and suppliers.”

The fate of the GAME stores throughout mainland Europe is still up in the air, but unless they find a similar white knight, they’re likely looking at closure.

No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…

It’s all about looking backwards this week as the Warp Zoned staff took a gander at the last four weeks and took stock of what they’ve been playing in the latest edition of Warpback.

We weren’t the only ones looking back this week. Sega examined their most recent financial quarter and didn’t like what they saw. After failing to sell as many games as they’d hoped, the house of Sonic was forced to cut staff and cancel a few unnamed games.

Who else is looking back? Jump forward beyond the break to find out with the Weekly Warp-Up. (more…)

Tough times are ahead for Sega (and it’s parent company, Sega Sammy Holdings). During it’s most recent earnings report, the publisher confirmed that it expects to post an extraordinary financial loss “due to the challenging economic climate and significant changes in the home video game software market environment in the U.S. and Europe.”

What that means is that Sega isn’t selling as many games as they expected they would, so they’re about to lose a ton of money. In this case, the company estimates that the total loss will be close to $85 million (which is seven billion yen).

As you might have guessed, Sega’s solution to their money woes is to lay off staff (“create a smaller company positioned for sustained profitability,” according to Sega) and the cancellation of future projects that don’t come from “strong IPs.” Sega confirmed that future titles in the Sonic the Hedgehog, Football Manager, Total War and Aliens franchises are safe.

The publisher did not detail which games would be canceled, but the company is working on a slew of titles outside those properties including Anarchy Reigns, Jet Set Radio HD, Yakuza 5, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, and possibly a Shenmue remake.