14 DAY TRIAL // Sega appeared to be struggling with its big titles a while back, but the company's fiscal year-end report reveals that the company's profits increased year-on-year.
The reveal comes from a financial results presentation targeting the last fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2014. The report points out that a large part of Sega's profits came from its Pachislot and Pachinko business, which "increased significantly" from the previous year.
The company also saw some solid earnings from its digital consumer business, with titles such as Phantasy Star Online performing admirably and taking Sega's efforts beyond the profitability threshold.
Sega has also revealed that it's still struggling with its packaged titles, not even the big names being able to score enough sales. The company has mentioned that sales were sluggish at best, particularly overseas, showing the following numbers:
[PC] Total War: Rome II (EU, US) – 1.13 million [PC] Football Manager 2014 (EU, US) – 790,000 [Wii U, 3DS] Sonic: Lost World (JP, EU, US) – 710,000 [PC] Company of Heroes 2 (EU, US) – 680,000 [PS3, PS4] Yakuza Restoration (JP) – 390,000
Last year, Sega released a number of 141 titles, 68 of which are free-to-play, while 73 regular ones. During the ongoing year, ending on March 31, 2015, Sega plans to release a much smaller number of 43 games, of which 30 will be free-to-play titles.
The figures above include Sega's smartphone games business, which accounts for the high number of releases.
In addition to this, Sega is also planning on increasing its earnings from the free-to-play segment by releasing a number of titles based on prominent IPs, in additional to the regular packaged ones.
The pachislot and pachinko machines still represent a hefty portion of Sega's projected income during the ongoing fiscal year, the forecast including a year-over-year increase of around 20 percent, a conservative forecast based on this year's increase of 28 percent.
Its consumer business forecast, however, aims for a 29 percent increase in net sales, considerably more than last year's 19 percent.
The projected figures still show that the sale of pachislot and pachinko machines will be the one of the main driving forces behind Sega's operations in the near future, surpassing the digital and packaged game operation by a considerable margin.
Sonic seems to be getting older, having been outsold by Sega's strategy titles. The spikey-haired hedgehog might not be the same youthful and nimble speed demon he was 20 years ago, but, in all fairness, both Football Manager and Company of Heroes have a very dedicated fanbase overseas.
