More rumor-mongering coming from IGN, and this time the word on the vine concerns that of SEGA of America. It seems that the current economic crunch is affecting even the American branch of SEGA, with the company rumored to have laid off at least 30 employees to cut costs. What particular department in SOA that’s getting their resources slashed is something we don’t know yet, what with the company keeping mum on this issue – but yeah. They might be laying off people as we speak.

IGN cites an unnamed source inside SEGA itself.

Rumors are rumors, and sometimes they’re nothing but. However, we wouldn’t really be surprised if this particular bit of news turns out to be true, what with Free Radical going under, Sony and Microsoft doing the same workforce-demoralizing tactics and so on. We just hope that the crew making up SONIC Team (bless their hearts) gets their offices locked down and all their shit boxed up nice and tight in the company parking lot.

There were so many ways that the DS could have evolved. Nintendo could’ve made the top screen touch-sensitive. The whole thing could have been compacted to fold up into a convenient Gameboy SP-sized package, like one of those shoop’ed ads circulating the interwebs from long, long ago. But no, they had to come up with the Nintendo DSi, which is basically a re-designed DS without the GBA port and dual 0.3 megapixel cameras. Well at least the screens themselves are bigger, and there’s some potential with homebrew ( the DSi also offers SD card support and internal storage as new features ). We’ll take what we can get.

Anyway, IGN seems to be on the vine with the latest regarding the latest model of the Nintendo DS, citing numerous but unnamed sources in their report that the redesign would cost around US$ 179.99, and will be launching in the Americas on April 4. That’s a bit of a hefty price, but it’s a good thing, considering that the Nintendo DS lite is still selling like hotcakes (selling 1.5 million units in November), making the DSi more of an optional upgrade than anything else. I’m sure I won’t be plunking money down on it.

Let’s face it, times are hard – and major companies from all over the world will either be massively downsizing or closing up entirely.  It’s no surprise that even Sony, being the entertainment technology juggernaut that it is, is rumored to follow suit sometime this month. No, it’s not going to close down entirely – but there’s talk of it closing down some major divisions in order to stay afloat. When you consider this with the fact that they’ve just announced plans to let go of 8000 employees, well, it’s just a bit distressing.

What’s more distressing, however, is when we take this rumor and think about it for a second: just how many “major” divisions does Sony have that it can close down? Well, there’s evidently that division that churns out all those cameras and widescreen TVs, and then there’s the PlayStation division. The thought of either one bowing out of the fray is…well, unthinkable. Are we seeing the death of one of the well-loved brands of videogaming ever to entertain us? Let’s hope not.