On Friday, SEGA Sammy Holdings posted their 3rd quarter results for the fiscal year 2012. In it they gave out numbers for Sonic Generations, Mario & Sonic at the London Olympic Games 2012 and Hatsune Miku. Following the disaster that shaked Japan to its core, many Japanese business are recovering strongly but how did SEGA, in particular their consumer division, cope with the financial crisis in America and Europe? And did both their arcade operations and Sammy’s own business recover strongly from the disaster? Read on to find out.
Overall, the group posted some extremely healthy figures, with net profits reaching ¥34,384 million (Or £285.5 million/$451.2 million). Whilst an entirely great figure, it should be noted that this is a decrease pf 6.6% from the prior year. It certainly would cause a decrease on their full year figure, the company predicting their full year net income to be down by 8.4% to ¥38 billion (£315.5 million/$498.7 million) so whilst net income would be down, still a great figure to be able to pull off, especially as the Japanese earthquake that rocked businesses nationwide and seemed to have thrown off several segments profitability.
Not everything was peachy for their consumer business though, this was despite SEGA having two games that sold over a million in the Oct – Dec 2011 period with Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (Selling 2.390 million) and Sonic Generations (Selling 1.630 million) with the only other title SEGA showing numbers for was Hatsune Miku Project Diva Extended (290,000) in the end, SEGA’s consumer division suffered “sluggish demand” in the European and American markets, the segment reported an operating loss of ¥5,509 million (£45.7 million/$72.3 million) a downgrade from last year were the segment managed an operating profit. Still, SEGA is expecting the segment to post a profit in the end, but much will surely depend on titles such as Binary Domain and Rise of the Samurai performing. Before we move on, SEGA also mentioned Kingdom Conquest and Ryu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza) mobile doing well for them, with Kingdom Conquest getting 2 million downloads to date, an impressive figure and no doubt what inspiried Samurais & Dragons.
Moving away from their console business, SEGA’s traditional arcade business has certainly picked up over the last few years and it now seems the segment, both in arcade sales and amusement centre operation, are starting to turn profits on a regular basis. In the arcades sales, SEGA noted impressive sales for “StarHorse3 Season I: A NEW LEGEND BEGINS” (¥3.3 billion) WORLD CLUB Champion Football Intercontinental Clubs Series (¥3.1 Billion) and SEGA NETWORK MAHJONG MJ5 (¥2.7 Billion) Thus, this allowed the arcade machine sales to report an operating profit of ¥5 billion (£41.5 million/$65.6 million) whilst the Amusement Centres recorded an operating income of ¥1.2 billion (£9.9 million/$15.7 million) despite this, SEGA will continue to close more centres than opening, with 247 centres still open in Japan (At this point last year, they had 252 opened) and only 3 arcade centres still left open overseas (Compared to the 11 this time last year)
Finishing off this article, it should come as no surprise that Sammy once again produced profits that are almost unrivaled in the video game industry itself (with only Microsoft and on occasion, Activition, being able to topple them) with sales for Pachinko and Pachislot machines totalling an impressive ¥67.4 billion in operating income (£559.6 million/$884.5 million) it certainly shows that the segment that was struggling with an operating loss of similar figures only in 2008 and 2009 has recovered exceptionally well, one hopes this can continue for all of SEGA Sammy.
That about rounds up another financial report from myself, I hope you enjoyed reading it. SEGA Sammy’s next financial report which would happen to be their full year report in May 2012. By that time, no doubt we would see continued sales of Sonic Generations and Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games getting it’s 3DS version and a major title from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio in Binary Domain. ‘Til May, thank you for reading!
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Aaaawwweeesome! Thanks Aki XD. I was dreading going through this thing tonight and writing it up, lol. Superb break down man, much better then other websites.
Thanks man! Lucky that George got me in time to ask me to do it, hoping sales of SEGA’s consumer business picks up!
wait a second, didn’t colors sell 2 million in the same amount of time? This can’t be right.
No but it came close, Sonic Colours sold 1.85 million between Oct – Dec 2010, then for the full year report (Adding sales between Jan – Mar 2011) Sonic Colours ended with 2.18 million.
Sonic Generations is still charting in a few European charts, so it could cross over the 2 million mark itself. Depends if it’s still selling in America too.
Great news and great write up! I know numbers and sales figures aren’t the most fun reads, but they’re the most important. Hopefully Binary Domain sells well!
It’s always enlightening to read Aki’s posts about financial reports. He somehow makes them not boring.
I think if the home console side does post profits it’ll be a very close call.
Sega needs to up their output of social games like Kingdom Conquest and free to play games like Spiral Knights where people pay as they play.
Not to mention they are sitting on a gold mine of classic games that would be well recieved on XBLA and PSN… Get on that!
Finally what is the hold up with bringing back series like Jet Set Radio and other highly requested games. Why keep struggling with new IPs when you have so many established and much loved unused series under your belt?
Segas consumer buisness could very well be making profits, they have the means…
Can you do me a favor?
Write a personal letter addressed to *Haruki Satomi, Senior Vice President of Digital Business at Sega of America.*
Mention to him the specific classic I.P.’s that you think should come back with some support as to why they are commercially viable. Also specify which will give the best return on investment in terms of cost, ease of porting and sales potential.
Somebody got Guardian Heroes ported just because they met Satomi at a show and suggested it to him. (might have been Satomi, Sega president)
I would do it, but I’m really lazy.
Thanks.
Letters don’t do much I’m afriad.
There is no excuse that Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, NiGHTS, and arcade Sega Rally aren’t on PSN/Live generating money for Sega.
lets hope that whi the release of sonic 4 episode 2 sega will see a recover
Great write up
Don’t wanna sound harsh, but SEGA are fools to think they could screw gamers with 2 famous mascots together in a mediocre game for the third time. Of course it’s gonna go from 6 mill to around 2.5.. The thing is that the olympic concept isn’t even so bad, the games are just horrible. I played the game at my cousin the other day and modes like soccer are laughably awful. Why don’t they just make a good olympic game….
Well anyway enough ranting.
I think SEGA’s name is gaining alot of momentum and if 2012 succeeds that will only become better. I can’t really explain sonic generations sales. I wonder if everything is counted in that sales report (like steam’s sales). The game had alot of marketing supporting it. But personally I got the game 30 euro’s on steam, which was it’s launch price. It’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t personally dissapointed with the game’s content. But the game was a missed opportunity in alot of ways. Considering it was something that could only happen on sonic’s 20th aniversary, I think they did an awful job with some of their decisions for the game but I don’t know how much that has affected the game.. so yeah
The olympics are still far away. When it starts, will probably help the sales. About the quality of the game, well, i dont like, you dont like, but this is the kinda of game that the casual players love. Sometimes, i search for opinions on twitter and there is a lot of casual players saying that “the game is very fun”. They dont care about graphics or things like that. Well, this is just my personal opinion, of course.
About the report, thanks Aki At ! Why SEGA did not showed the sales for Shinobi 3ds, 7th Dragoon and the others games? Seems that Shinobi 3ds had bad sales, but 7th Dragoon did well…
Shinobi 3DS had sub 5k sales in the month it was released in America according to NPD, official numbers there.
As for 7th Dragoon 2020, yeap it sold well (Outsold the original by around 40,000 units) but it was not the big seller in Japan for SEGA in that period (Keep in mind, I do believe Puyo also came out and did great figures too) and they just wanted to show off the games that has massive sales to their investors.
More puzzling is why Football Manager is a no sure, I know for a fact it is over 500k in sales, but perhaps SEGA felt Sonic Generations and Mario & Sonic 3 were enough “Western” sales they wished to show.
Actually, it’s 2.5 million on just one platform, compared this with Mario & Sonic at the Winter Games which released on two platforms at 5.67 million, it’s actually still a good figures. If you check charts throughout Europe, Mario & Sonic at the London Olympic Games is actually still selling quite well, mainly because its Sonic + Mario + Party game on Wii + Olympics. Once the 3DS version comes out and the actual Olympics takes off, I’m pretty sure it’s going to sell like crazy and be yet another big seller in the series. Though doubt it can topple any of the prior games sales, nearing the end of the Wii’s life in addition to a smaller userbase on the 3DS leads me to believe that is highly unlikely.
I take your word as credible. But I do think that Mario and sonic’s sales isn’t only based around young kids that like the idea of the 2 mascots together. The decline of sales between the first olympic game and second was pretty big as well if I remember correctly.
We’ll see, but I still think that the olympic games could have been fun nonetheless. The soccer mode had so much potential to be a fun dream game. So are alot of other modes that just scream laziness. Makes no sense imo, the game get’s so much development time and yet almost none of the games is fun enough to make it worth buying. *shrugs*
The second game also was not based on the Olympics! Whilst this game will sell a lot from now till the olympics and then probably see it’s sales shot up ten times when the actual Olympics begin.
As for the content of the game, I actually thought all three are fairly good minigame collection for a party of friends, nothing less, nothing more. As such I am more forgiving on it’s faults.
*Don’t know how much that has affected the game’s *sales*