SEGA-Sammy has posted their detailed financial report for the last six months, spanning from April to September 2015. If you guys didn’t know, April 1st is when SEGA’s massive restructure happen and around June is when SEGA of America did their big move. Not only that but the company hasn’t been releasing as much software as they used to, but they still manage to make profit even with a decrease in sales.

SEGA-Sammy reports 1.2 billion in net sales, which happens to be a decrease of 2.5% over the same six month period in 2014, where they reported over 1.3 billion. Yet SEGA-Sammy posted a profit of $7.9 million, compared to losing $23 million in 2014.

SEGA-Sammy said that digital games just happen to be one of the big money makers for the company which happen to them get out of the red. What games did good? Lets look.

Digital Games

Not surprising SEGA’s biggest money makers in the digital departement just happen to be Japanese exclusive titles like Chain Chronicles (Gumi publishes outside of Japan), Puyopuyo Quest!! (which is being reskinned for a Western release) and of course Phantasy Star Online 2 which is getting a brand new port on Playstation 4 which will include an brand new episode update.

While most hardcore gamers in the west look down on mobile gaming, SEGA says they have seen a moderate increase in growth (at least in Japan):

“games [on] smart devices continues to grow at a moderate pace in Japan, in line with the spread of smartphones.” – SEGA-Sammy financial report

SEGA says that their digital games were hitting below expectations before March, that strategic revisions helped the sales of digital games and has now they’ve been one of the bigger successes in their consumer division.

“Performance in the digital game software field in the first half of the year ending March 31, 2016 were below the initial plan because the Group made a strategic revision to the timing of the launch of titles in response to intensifying competition and also because certain titles were less well-received than expected,” – SEGA-Sammy financial report

Now that SEGA’s had a good amount of growth with digital games in Japan, maybe they’ll start publishing more of these type of games over in the West. I know we want Phantasy Star Online 2. A bit disapointed that the SEGA 3D Classics didn’t do good enough to earn praise on their financial reports because they did a fantastic job with some of those.

SEGA expects a 58% growth in digital game sales by the end of the fiscal year and a drop -6% on packaged games sold. Seems that SEGA is only expecting to lose sales in packaged game titles (this is comparing it to 2014’s performance). Sort of gives you a hint at where SEGA wants to go for the future and we shall see how that turns out in the long term. Right now, it seems that its worked, to at least get them out of the red.

Pachislot & Panchinko machines

We all know that SEGA-Sammy, mostly Sammy’s side, loves those Panchislot & Panchinko machines. The things print money and is a good way to make use of your famous IPs. Well, Sammy released two machines during the 2nd Quarter which sold 83,516 units and expects to release 7 titles for the full year selling 240,000 units of slot machines. This is only for Pachislot machines, as for Pachinko machines they did 3 titles which sold 62,893 units and are expecting to release 5 titles after the financial year reaching a total sales of 165,000 units. That mean’s that Sammy expects to sell 405,000 total Pachislots & Panchinko machines before the end of the financial year. Sammy also owns a couple of other companies that put out these types of machines including Ginza/Rodeo and TAIYO ELEC but their units don’t come close to the gambling behemoth known as Sammy.

Sammy’s biggest Pachislot machine was Fist of the North Star themed (Hokuto no Ken) which sold a whopping 69,000 units by itself. Their top selling pachinko title happen to be Shin-Juoh 2 with 33,000 units and Tomorrow’s Joe (aka Ashita no Joe) coming in second with 16,000 units.

SEGA’s 2016 marks a comeback?

One of the things that sucked this year is that SEGA didn’t have any big triple A titles. This is all part of SEGA trying to commit more development time for their triple A games which will include in-house games like Yakuza 6, Yakuza Kiwami, Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary game, Total War: WARHAMMER, and even Halo Wars 2 which is being developed by Creative Assembly with a expected fall 2016 release. As stated above SEGA’s in-house developers are working on a Playstation 4 port of Phantasy Star Online 2 which will launch with the ‘Episode 4’ expansion to all users for free. We will also be seeing Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice and see if delaying the game into 2016 will deliver a higher quality product. Since companies move slowly I expect to find out more about that Valkyria Chronicles related trademark and what SEGA means when they say they will be revisiting legacy titles. We will also be seeing what SEGA Games CEO Haruki Satomi has in store for the future of the company, since he only took his position in April 1st of this year and all these 2016 games have been in development before he got his position.

Atlus has even delayed Persona 5 from this year to Summer 2016 in Japan, saying they were trying to add more polish to the final product. That isn’t all Atlus has in store for gamers in 2016, they have announced that they will be publishing the following titles: Kickstarter-funded RPG Cryamore, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Final, and they even have Genei Ibun Roku ♯FE (aka Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei). Atlus is also working on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Etrian Odyssey V which both haven’t gotten solid release dates yet.

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