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It looks like SEGA is coming back! In its first publicly-released quarterly earnings report, the company announced that it had generated a profit of ¥1.89 billion ($15.8 million USD) across ¥42.4 billion ($353 million USD) in sales between April and June 2003. And it's all down to Sonic. According to SEGA, the surprise uplift to the publisher's fortunes has come thanks to the release of Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut on the Gamecube, which sold above expectations. Another title, Let's Make A J-League Soccer Club 3 for PlayStation 2, is also credited with impressive sales. SEGA dropped out of the home console business back in 2001, in a move that made everyone feel like all was lost for the company that made Sonic. It's great to see the company doing so well today, with its third-party efforts starting to bear decent results. Certainly, it looks like the ports are selling well... so it makes you think, what the sales for Sonic Heroes will be... Via Planet Gamecube

With another fiscal quarter complete, it's time once again for a trip to the Financial Zone, aaaaaannnndddd... this time it's not all roses and Super Games. Perhaps the biggest item of note is that SEGA Sammy has reduced their overall forecasts by about 10 billion yen (or about $67 million after conversion). While the resorts expect to hold steady and the pachislot forecast is actually increasing, it's not expected to fully make up for underperforming game software sales. SEGA Sammy specifically calls out less than expected sales of Sonic Superstars, ENDLESS™ Dungeon (yes, only ENDLESS gets a trademark for some reason), and Total War: PHARAOH (I assume you have to shout "PHARAOH" when you say the name). Some fans have been quick to place blame on Sonic Superstars, and that may be valid: SEGA chose a particularly nasty release window and cited that game specifically during their forecast revision. However, it is one of a staggering 10 new retail games and ports released this fiscal year, not counting expansions and subscription-service games. To editorialize just a bit, perhaps it's not wise to release three new Sonic games (yes, I'm including The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog) and two major Sonic game expansions in a single year, or to assume that a rising Frontiers lifts all ships in equal measure. SEGA notes that sales numbers did increase thanks to the acquisition of Rovio, even if overall profits fell. Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds Dream Blast continue to represent the highest moneymakers, leaving everything else to fight over scraps (and by scraps, I still mean multiple millions of Euro in sales per quarter). Despite the quarter's under-performance, SEGA was quick to tout recent successes, including both Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Persona 3 Reload quickly hitting the million sales mark, a speed record for each of their respective franchises. SEGA Europe, which saw major layoffs last year, is still expected to investigate "structural reforms." And finally, to wrap up with the most important news, last year's Fist of the North Star pachislot machine has moved 84 thousand units. I know this is an important detail to the Sonic fan community, and I didn't want to leave it out. You can find the full Q3 Results Presentation directly here, or on SEGA Sammy's Investor Relations website.

The Sonic the Hedgehog game series has sold over 1.2 million units over the last three months, according to the latest financial results from SEGA's corporate body SEGA Sammy Holdings. During SEGA's first quarter of FY2024 (April 1 - June 30, 2023), Sonic series game sales reached approximately 1.22 million units, a drop of nearly 240,000 copies compared to the same period the previous year, but still pretty impressive. Although these results were not further broken down by game, it's safe to assume that the lion's share came from continuing sales of Sonic Frontiers. The open-zone adventure game originally released last November, but has received free content updates in March and June, which is likely to have sustained interest in the title. Sonic Origins Plus also released in June and would have contributed to the sales figure above, but sales were only tracked for a week so we are more likely to see the impact of this release in the next quarter. Elsewhere in its fiscal report, SEGA announced that overall sales were up 63% year-on-year to ¥108 billion ($756.9 million) and their operating income rose 712% to ¥22.5 billion ($123 million). Further games growth of around 9% is expected throughout the rest of the year - due to the upcoming release of titles such as Sonic Superstars and Persona 5 Tactica. Overall, it sounds like SEGA is in a great place right now, and with Superstars and more Frontiers DLC right around the corner it seems like the Sonic series is going to experience one fantastic sales year. via Final Weapon and MyNintendoNews

SEGA Sammy has reported that the Sonic the Hedgehog game series has sold a total of 5.8 million units worldwide in the past fiscal year (ending March 2022), an increase of 30% over 2021 on the back of new release Sonic Colors: Ultimate. During the Japanese corporation's annual business and shareholder meeting, SEGA CEO Haruki Satomi shared details of the Sonic series' sales performance over the last two years. In the fiscal year 2021 (from April 2020-March 2021), the franchise had sold 4.4m units by comparison. SEGA also revealed in its report that it aims to spend the next fiscal year (April 2022 through March 2023) "strengthening user engagement" in its core franchises, with the Sonic series specifically mentioned as an area of focus. Noting the release of the Hollywood Sonic movies, the upcoming Sonic Prime on Netflix and SEGA's own Sonic Frontiers, the company will use these projects as a means to further expand Sonic's brand awareness globally. Beyond Sonic, SEGA Sammy also announced a focus over the next year on "multiple" remakes and remasters on top of its planned schedule of new titles in already-established franchises. Sonic was not specifically mentioned as a future focus for this new endeavour, but it did state that an example of this strategy would be the upcoming Sonic Origins - a compilation of classic 16-Bit Sonic titles to be released on modern platforms. It is likely that SEGA will be looking more broadly at its back catalogue with regards to remakes, but with Sonic fans clamouring for a modern platform release of Sonic Unleashed (outside of Xbox's Backward Compatibility program) amongst other things, it feels like this is an area in which SEGA's stated goal of expanding Sonic's brand could fit quite well. Source: SEGA Sammy / VGC

SEGA has just given word that it has made a profit for the first time in five years! That's huge news, considering that the company's future is tied to Sonic's future - so a healthy SEGA is a healthy Sonic franchise. According to Gamespot (via TSSZ), "while Sega's operating profits were 34.5 percent lower than the year before, the company's arcade business posted a profit of 18.8 billion yen ($161 million), resulting in 3 billion yen ($25 million) in profit for the company." Compare that to last year, where it made 8.5 billion yen ($73 million) in losses, and half of their games did not make any profit for the company at all, and you can see how that is an amazing turnaround. But it sounds like there will be more changes to come in order to keep the profits flowing. Gamespot's article reads; We'll wait and see what all of this means, but the good news is that SEGA is now clear of it's finance troubles, and is even making a tidy profit. Perhaps if the company spared the world of the 32X and the Mega CD, we could have seen these profits sooner. Never mind, eh? Many thanks to Robert Frazer for the tip!

"Will Microsoft buy SEGA" is a question that has survived within the community since the death of the Dreamcast, but after years of speculation, we now have a concrete example of them trying to do just that... but very, very recently. As reported by The Verge, an e-mail from Xbox's Phil Spencer shared during Microsoft's FTC hearing shows that Spencer was seeking approval to approach SEGA Sammy in November of 2020. Spencer touts SEGA's portfolio and global appeal as big benefits for their Game Pass service; however, SEGA was among several companies being considered, including Supergiant Games, IO Interactive, and even Bungie. As history as borne out, none of these possible acquisitions were seen to completion, and Microsoft began pursuing Activision Blizzard following ABK's repeated scandals. Despite the will-they-won't-they dogging Microsoft and SEGA over the years, buying SEGA comes with some complications, which Spencer acknowledges in the e-mail. Beyond the cultural barrier, SEGA is a major component of the larger SEGA Sammy group of animation studios, music labels, toy makers, travel resorts, pachinko machine makers, Japanese sports teams, and online-enabled arcade dart machine services. Even if Microsoft wasn't able to buy SEGA outright, Like a Dragon and Persona fans can still find a hearty chunk of SEGA's modern library on Game Pass.

After two years of stinging losses, SEGA has announced that it has returned to profit - and it thanks its trusty mascot Sonic the Hedgehog for helping it get there. According to a report on Gaming-Age, SEGA Corp in Tokyo revealed that it has hit an operating profit for the year ending March 31 of 14.2 billion yen ($110.9 million), recovering from a loss of 52 billion yen the past year. It's not totally great news - the company still suffers from a group net loss for the fifth year running, but it's nowhere as big as it was last year. The loss narrowed to 17.8 billion yen for the year, from an eye-watering 51.7 billion yen the year prior. Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as the SEGA Sports series and the lack of costs associated with handling a hardware business, have been credited to the surge in operating profits. However, due to the Japanese economy and the declining birth rate in Japan, SEGA also noted that it will reinforce efforts to appeal to Western markets with future game projects. Source: Gaming-Age

SEGA has said it will meet its projections for the fiscal year, and has set ambitious sales targets for the next twelve months as the company predicts a surge back to growth. This prediction comes on the back of discontinuing the Dreamcast console earlier in the year, and by cutting its arcade operational costs in half. Naturally, the thinking is that with overheads cut and revenues boosted from the company's new third-party publishing strategy, things will look rather rosy for the House of Sonic. According to XenGamers, 'SEGA's chief operating officer Tetsu Kayama has reportedly reassured investors in Japan that the company will meet projections for the fiscal year... anticipating an operating profit of 11 billion yen. SEGA has set sales projections at 23 million units for the next year [and] hopes for continued sales strength in the North American market.' "I don't think it's difficult to achieve the targets, there should be a lot of positive factors for Sega in 2002," Kayama said. "There are statistics that the U.S. game market will grow to billion by 2005 from billion last year." Lofty goals - let's hope they hit it! Source: XenGamers

Today, IDW has announced plans to cut 39% of its staff and delist itself from the New York Stock Exchange, as reported by Yahoo Finance. While an IDW Media Holdings investor report highlights the "approximately $4.4 million in annual savings," this decision follows significant reported losses this year of $335,000. ICV2 notes that book channel sales were up in the company's Q1 2023 financial reports, including those from the Sonic series and TMNT: The Last Ronin; however, major drops hit the company from their games division and streaming series. As part of big shake-up, IDW's Board of Directors has moved Davidi Jonas, previously Board Vice Chairman (and son of the Board Chairman), to CEO, and Amber Huerta, Senior VP of People and Organizational Development, to COO. At this time, we do not have any specific information regarding how this may impact IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog series, nor have we heard any reports of its staff being part of the 39% cut. With the series being one of IDW's bigger successes, and SEGA continuing to collaborate with IDW writers and artists on non-IDW projects, it's unlikely that Sonic himself will be on the chopping block. That said, executive shifts and deep staff cuts still have the potential to directly or indirectly impact the series. We extend sympathies to all whose job was hit by these cuts. Source: ComicsBeat.com

SEGA Sammy’s most recent Investor Q&A had a few choice tidbits about Sonic Frontiers’ performance and the broad future of the series. Though the game didn’t get the critical response that was expected, SEGA feels that the game connected with players and significantly beat sales expectations. "It's true that the Metacritic Score [for Sonic Frontiers] was slightly lower than we expected, but the user's score was very high," the company said (via translation courtesy of Twitter account Tails' Channel). "With that, we believe we have found a title that is widely accepted by a lot of people around the world." Responding to a question concerning sales promotions of the game shortly after release, the publisher said that, while it "conducted intensive promotions around the November release", and held a temporary sale on Black Friday, it was still able to achieve significant unit sales without reducing perception of the game's quality. "The number of units sold greatly exceeded our original estimation... we will continue to sell over the long term based on sales strategies such as pricing, promotions and the development of further DLC." As a consequence of this and the broader global financial situation, SEGA is expecting higher development costs for their major titles - which we imagine includes Sonic titles going forward. "We will strive to ensure solid quality in the development of major titles... however, development labour costs will rise... since it is necessary to take on these challenges for major titles, we are proceeding with a bigger budget, even from the basic research stage." SEGA also announced via their Investor Relations portal that they will be increasing employee salaries by about 30% “to further stabilize employee income and create a more comfortable working environment, as well as to further strengthen its global competitiveness.” SEGA is one of many companies increasing salaries in Japan following Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s call to boost salaries across the board to combat rising costs.

Sonic Frontiers has proven to be a standout release for SEGA, as the company disclosed in its latest quarterly investor call that the free-roaming adventure sold over 2.9 million units worldwide by the end of December 2022. Annual Sonic series sales has also exploded year on year, with 4.12m unit sales sold during this third fiscal quarter, adding to a current FY total of 6.75 million units - already surpassing the previous FY 2022 total of 5.8 million units. SEGA Sammy has attributed a lot of its sales fortunes over the last quarter to the "strong" performance of its newly-released titles, such as Sonic Frontiers and Persona 5 The Royal (which sold 1.3 million units in the same timeframe). However, it noted that "repeat sales" of older games "went weak", which has led SEGA Sammy to revise its forecasted FY total game sales from 34.2m units by year's end to 28.2m units. Still, while the YOY Q3 full game unit sales comparison is a downward trend (20.7m units sold in Q3 2023 compared to 21.9m units in Q3 2022), SEGA's revenue from those sales have been stronger this past quarter (142.5 billion yen in Q3 2023 compared to 119.6 billion yen in Q3 2022). SEGA's strategy for the near-term, according to its reported forecast, is to launch several major IP titles (one of which we can assume involves Samba de Amigo which was recently announced for Nintendo Switch) as well as a "revaluation of asset quality of some titles." Guess we'll have to wait and see what that means. Check out SEGA Sammy's full Q3 2023 fiscal report right here.

This morning, NPD’s Mat Piscatella shared a number of game sales statistics for December and 2022 on the whole, and as it turns out, Sonic Frontiers did quite well in a year with a successful Call of Duty remake, a new God of War, three Pokemon RPGs, and the eternal juggernaut Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The game ended 2022 as the 16th best selling title in dollar sales. While NPD doesn’t publicly give the exact sales numbers, Frontiers ranked 6th in December (previously 4th in November) in overall sales. When split by platform holder, Frontiers didn’t quite crack any 2022 top 10, but the game did hit the December platform-specific charts with #5 on Nintendo, #9 on Playstation, and #7 on Xbox. If you’d like to check out both the December and full 2022 rankings, the thread can be found here.