Ever since the Dreamcast took out Sega's hopes as a console maker, and Sega departed the console wars to focus on making some exciting games--who didn't enjoy Crazy Taxi, especially the full-size arcade cabinet version?--Sega's been somewhat on the decline. The newest word out of Sega doesn't make things any better, and heavily features words like "losses" and "layoffs".

Sega's European arm is looking to close offices in France, Spain, Germany, Benelux and, in an non-European development, Australia as well. No one's sure just how many employees are affected by this development, but any layoffs are tragic all the same.

Sega hasn't had a good run of things in recent years, but they're not without their pluses as well. They have a decent array of titles available to them--Sonic alone is a Mario-grade property, and they've got plenty else like Total War and the Aliens franchise as well.

Sega's strategy of focusing on games has been something of a mixed bag, and they've got to bring out more titles--and good ones at that--if they're going to keep this strategy up for any length of time. Sega either needs a whole lot of little games or some really big blockbuster titles to try and get back in the game, metaphorically speaking.

It will remain to be seen just what Sega can put together in the coming months, but hopefully they can get something worthwhile in play before we start hearing about more layoffs.