SEGA-Sammy

SEGA-Sammy casino gaming video takes bragging to a new level

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Ever wonder what type of videos a investor gets from big Japanese companies? Me too and it will most likely be exactly like the video above. Oddly enough its even translated and fully voiced in English. The video isn’t humble at all talking about the greatness of SEGA-Sammy from owning ‘top leading’ animation studios like Marza and TMS Entertainment to SEGA’s ability to ‘drive Japan’s gaming scene forward with their superior game development capabilities‘.

This video is mostly to promote a new business within’ SEGA-Sammy called ‘SEGA-Sammy Creation’ which will be making casino machines. The president and CEO of the company oddly enough is Hisao Oguchi who has been at SEGA for over 30 years who is known for leading the highly successful SEGA-AM3 arcade team that created Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis series.

The video makes me question if the company understands that their IPs aren’t as strong as they used to be, since the video seems overly positive. But at least the company is recognizing console games as a division within the company.

I’ll just leave this here: 

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SEGA is not leaving the console market

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I just want to take this time to tell you guys the truth, not the half truths and not some clickbait articles that mainstream media have been passing around. I usually ignore this talk of ‘SEGA is dead’ or ‘SEGA is going out of business’ because this has been talked about in the mainstream media since the late-90’s and I just assumed  we were over these types of things. We are on the internet, I assumed someone would have pointed out fabrications if there where any and it seems not many have.

So is SEGA going to stop supporting consoles with games? The answer is: No. Here is what the statement from SEGA-Sammy said:

Local organizations managing packaged game software in Western markets will be streamlined. In the U.S. Sega of America Inc. based in San Francisco will be relocated to Southern California by this summer and its existing office in San Francisco will be closed, thereafter, which results in reducing fixed expenses, mainly in corporate functions. 

SEGA has stated that they want to focus more on digital games and PC due to the area having a bigger profit margin and considering there are over a 125 million active users on Steam and a billion plus market on phones, do you really blame them? Focusing on digital titles doesn’t mean that they aren’t making console ‘packaged software’. Nowhere in their press release did it say they were going to stop making console titles. If anything, they literally announced that they were bringing Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax to the West two days prior to this restructure announcement and a bit before that they announced Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX for 3DS.

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SEGA-Sammy’s Q1 2015 financial report detailed and explained

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SEGA-Sammy recently announced it’s first half results for the fiscal year and it came with mixed results. Some divisions have beaten expectations so far but the gloomy outlook for the rest of the year has effected the final net income expected by the group. During this period SEGA only released one major title but another up and coming title looks set to outdo their expectations, hit the link to find out what SEGA Sammy have been doing well and what the future holds for the group.

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SEGA Reports 44.3 Billion Yen Growth for 2013, Digital Market Thrives

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SEGA Sammy has released their earnings report for 2013, yielding a net profit of ¥44.3 billion, or $434 million, and a 564% increase year over year. The company attributed it to strong Pachinko performance and the sales of investment securities and non-current assets.

On the home electronics side, SEGA’s top three performing titles were Football Manager 14 at 680,000 units, Sonic Lost World for a combined 640,000 units, and the Japan-Only SAKATSUKU Pro Succer Club wo Tsukurou! for 200,000. Despite this, the nine-month period ending on Dec. 31, 2013 in which SEGA tracked numbers returned only 6.5 million total units of games moved, a decrease it attributes to “the harsh market environment.”

It’s not all doom and gloom because the company also found what they call “continued favorable” success on the digital side with Phantasy Star Online 2 and mobile phone titles Puyopuyo!! Quest and CHAIN CHRONICLE as the top runners there. The whole division saw a 19.7% increase year-to-year in net sales to a total of ¥72,934 million.

Keep in mind, back in November, SEGA purchased Atlus-parent company Index for a seemingly paltry ¥14 billion.

The release of the financial data comes hours after SEGA unveiled its plans for a massive spin-off of Sonic The Hedgehog with Sonic Boom.

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SEGA-Sammy is trying to buy Atlus’ parent company

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If you guys didn’t know, Atlus’ parent company, Index Corporation is in a finical mess. The company is in over $2.4 billion yen in debt and is also being investigated for fraud. The company recently talked about selling assets, but now it seems that they might just be bought out whole.

Bloomberg reports that 20 companies are in the race to buy Index, one of those companies is SEGA-Sammy Holdings who is leading the pack. It seems that bids have exceeded the $150 million everyone thought Index was worth, the current bid is at $200 million! It is said that bidding will be narrowed down by next week and if all goes well we will find out what company gets Index and their assets.

But lets say that SEGA does buy Atlus, would that be a great thing for gamers? I mean, I love SEGA and I love Atlus games, but Atlus always brought obscure games over from Japan for Wesetern audiences. Without them we wouldn’t have Demon Souls or even the recent Dragon Crown, while SEGA seems more hesitant to bring over titles (Yakuza 5, Valkyria Chronicles 3 and more). What are your thoughts?

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SEGA-Sammy’s net income up 400% from last year

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Its crazy knowing that filtering your content can do so much good for your company, especially SEGA’s recent financial results for the first quarter of its 2014 fiscal year. SEGA-Sammy’s operating income for the quarter ended on June 30th and totaled 16.1 billion yen ($163.85 million), 197.7 percent higher than the same time last year. Net income came in at a (for SEGA-Sammy) staggering 12.9 billion yen ($131.6 million), which is a 408.8 percent increase year-over-year.

SEGA-Sammy totally improved their consumer business segment, which includes those video games you loved published by SEGA and its Japanese pachislot/pachinko machine division. Panchislot/pachinko branch of the company saw a increase of revenue of 138.5%, totaling 18.7 billion yen ($190.2 million).

According to SEGA-Sammy’s press release, their latest RTS game (which they got by buying the team/their franchises from THQ for 26 million) Company of Heroes 2 sold a staggering 380,000 copies. I know most of you will see this and say it isn’t over a million units so it is a failure, but you have to know that this report is from June 30th, the game launched on June 25th. The only other major SEGA retail title outside of Company of Heroes 2, was the Playstation Portable Japan only title 7th Dragon 2020-2. SEGA’s publishing side saw a year-over-year decrease of 9.7 percent, selling 1.21 million units.

SEGA also reported favorable performance of their digital games on Windows PC, Playstation Vita and mobile devices. SEGA-Sammy state that Phantasy Star Online 2 (Japan only for now) helped bring the operating income of the consumer division up to 39 million yen (approximately $396,000).

It should be a good year for SEGA with Total War: Rome II, Football Manager 2014 and Sonic Lost Worlds around the corner.

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Marza Animation Planet’s next movie is called ‘Robodog’

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If you didn’t know, SEGA-Sammy own a CGI animated studio called Marza Animation Planet, who is co-producing the Captain Harlock movie.

The studio has now announced its new film which has begun pre-production and will be their first original film. They got Henry F. Anderson III (Gnomeo & Juliet) directing, Paul Wang (Astro Boy, TMNT) producing and Jeannette Manifold (Happy Feet, All Dogs Go to Heaven) as head of production. Its based on a script by Robert Reese.

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Marza Animation Planet trademarks “Luna’s Arc”

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Marza Animation Planet, a SEGA-Sammy owned CGI animation studio has trademarked the title ‘Luna’s Arc’.

This could be the title to their next film, which they chose the script from their online competition: Story Circus.  They have done the competition two years in a row and have picked up two full scripts to do an animated film on. Who knows, maybe next year us SEGAbit people will submit some scripts.

As for what this could be, who knows. Luna is Italian/Spanish for moon, which could me a space sort of film. What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

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