Like every Japanese publisher, Sega is looking to be a bit more closely integrated to western markets. In their case though, it's a bit more urgent, as they were recently lost by layoffs and other difficulties. As a result, Sega's CS division head Takayuki Kawagoe is looking to restructure the management to bring together the company's eastern and western divisions (via Edge).
"We need more integration so projects and initiatives on both sides can benefit from everyone?s experience and expertise," he said.

Talking about Sega's recent releases, he added, "There were mountains and valleys," referring to titles like the up-and-down Valkyria Chronicles, which had been left for dead before seeing a recent surge in sales.

In terms of western markets, Kawagoe said that Sega games were getting a better reception in Europe than in North America, but that good ratings did not always translate into high sales. He cited MadWorld as an example, which has sold 66,000 copies since its release.

Sega hopes to combat those issues by extending it IPs onto other media platforms, as it did recently with the Valkyria Chronicles anime adaptation. In the meantime, they've got quite a few intriguing titles on the way, including 7th Dragon, End of Eternity and Bayonetta. With luck, those titles will ensure that 2009 is kinder to the publisher than 2008 was.