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Sega Sammy sees fiscal net profit, Aliens shipped 1.3M, All-Stars Racing shipped 1.36M

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Via Joystiq a bit of good news for SEGA fans, and even better news for SEGA parent company Sega Sammy Holdings. Sega Sammy revealed their financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31st, 2013, making note of a net profit of ¥33.5 billion ($331 million), an annual growth of 53.3 percent. However, Sega Sammy’s operating profit decreased year-on-year by 67.3 percent, down to ¥19.1 billion ($189 million). A large part of the net profit was through the sales of “investment securities” and transfers of employees’ pension benefits. Fun stuff.

Sega Sammy made note of a decreased demand for packaged games, and that the company has to adapt towards games on social networks and mobile devices. Don’t freak out, as the packaged games that SEGA has released have been quite successful. Aliens: Colonial Marines, despite all the bad press and low review scores, shipped 1.31 million units. Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed shipped 1.36 million units. SEGAbits reader, and tipster ROJM notes that Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed just might be the most succesful non-Mario related spin-off Sonic game in the third party Sega era. Football Manager 2013 is noted as selling just under 1 million, however Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson has recently tweeted that the title has since passed the 1 million mark. Yakuza 5 shipped 590,000 units. It should be noted that as a result of SEGA’s lessening of packaged games that the total number of packaged shipments saw a decline (down 10.8 million overall), but the decline makes sense and was surely expected.

The biggest success, gaming-wise, is Phantasy Star Online 2, with a subscription base of over 2.5 million on the the PC and Vita. As the game is free-to-play, this large number isn’t exactly a gauge for how much the game made in sales, but the company says in-game purchases have “exceeded forecasted levels.” So, the game is exceeding expectations. It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers change once PSO2 releases to the West. As for the future of SEGA, the company forecasts 11 games on PC, 7 on Wii U, 7 on PS3, 6 on 3DS, 5 on Vita, 4 on Xbox 360, and 2 on PSP in the fiscal year ending March 31 2014. The company estimates a 41 percent growth in net profit for the next fiscal year, up to ¥47 billion, or $464 million.

Update: SEGA’s future game forecast is SKU numbers, not game numbers. So say for example, the new Sonic game comes out on 3DS, that counts as one SKU for each region, so that would leave 3 SKU’s for 3DS, one of the other 3DS SKU’s is probably japan exclusive hatsune miku, so that leaves 2 3DS SKU left. Digital games aren’t taken into account for SEGA’s SKU forecast.

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Zombie MAYhem – My Life with SEGA enters The House of the Dead

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Zombie MAYhem comes to a close with my review of The House of the Dead for SEGA Saturn.

The original was a smash in arcades way back in ’97. It spawned four sequels and two atrocious cinematic adaptations. While the arcade game was met with praise, the Saturn port was slammed pretty hard upon release. Game Revolution gave it ‘C’ and called it a “sloppy port” and warned “don’t go in this house”.

But how can this be? The Saturn gave us some stellar ports, like Virtua Fighter 2 and the Virtua Cop. Why is this? Watch and learn. Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

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Sonic Talk #19: Ask Ian Part Duex

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It’s been 13 episodes, but Sonic and Mega Man comic scribe Ian Flynn is back for another interview! We’ve got over two hours of questions from you, the fans! We’ll be taking about World’s Collide, the future of the books, his team up with Dawn Best on Sylvanna and his work on the superhero comic, The New Crusaders.Also, check out my written interview with Ian over at the Sonic Stadium.

For those waiting for the MP3/iTunes version, that will be up later this week.

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SEGA Tunes: Sonic Adventure’s Run Through the Speed Highway

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You know what had an awesome soundtrack? Sonic Adventure. Even if you hate the cheesy rock tunes of Crush40, it is hard to deny that Adventure’s soundtrack was by and large pretty awesome. Some of the game’s best tracks were those that went well with the blistering pace of Sonic’s levels. Case in point, “Run Through the Speed Highway”, the first theme of Speed Highway. Enjoy!

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SEGA Memories: Wacky Worlds

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These days, gamers can be quite adamant about the legitimacy of video games as an art form. I certainly wouldn’t disagree: a case can be made that making great video games requires just as much creativity as any book or movie. But I think what often gets lost in this pursuit to prove that the video game is a form of artistic expression is the fact that video games are also, essentially, toys. Especially games from the 80s and 90s, and Wacky Worlds was one of my favorite toys from the 90s.

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Round Table: Which ex-SEGA developers do you miss the most?

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Most people follow around sport teams and their players, here at SEGAbits we follow SEGA studios and developers. There have been tons of employees and developers that SEGA have fired or left throughout its long history, as is expected with every big publisher. But sometimes there is that developer that was behind one of your favorite games, when he leaves the company it really tugs at the heart strings. So in this week’s round table we will be discussing which ex-SEGA developers we miss the most!

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Zombie MAYhem – My Life with SEGA’s postmortem on Corpse Killer

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It’s time for some zombie MAYhem! In this first installment, I’m reviewing one of the first zombie games I ever played, as well as the first SEGA CD 32X title I purchased. This foul beast could only be unleashed by Digital Pictures, the same bastards that brought us a game like no other: Night Trap.

Yes, I’m talking about Corpse Killer. This monstrosity was released in 1994 for SEGA CD, though I missed it completely. Once I saw the 32X version, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see a game that used both the power of SEGA CD and 32X.

Anyway, click ‘PLAY’, brah! We need to get our zombie poison down up in ‘dis bitch! Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

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SEGA Memories: Evolution 2 – A larger and better adventure

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‘Sup y’all? Welcome to another episode of Monday Memories! Last week I discussed Evolution: The World of Sacred Device, Sting’s RPG for the Dreamcast launch. As a kid who was new to Japanese RPGs, I found it to be a fun and memorable adventure; though to Japanese RPG fans at the time, it was probably more along the lines of, “that lame dungeon crawler those Dreamcast owners are stuck with while we play Final Fantasy VIII.”

The Dreamcast would of course go on to see many far more developed Japanese RPGs by the end of its lifespan, but Evolution 2: Far Off Promise is one that I’d say deserves the “you tried your best” award by stepping up to the plate and offering some big improvements over its predecessor. As a little kid, my mind was blown.

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Round Table: Who would you want to see reboot Shining Force franchise?

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 Shining Force franchise was one of my favorites back in the day when Camelot Software was in charge of it in the 90’s, now-a-days SEGA has given other developers chances to reboot the franchise and the games have been received poorly by critics (and fans). Regardless of this, I still think that Shining Force franchise has the chance to comeback and do pretty well. This week on the round table we will discuss which developers should reboot Shining Force and release a classic game that this franchise deserves!

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Video Review: Mega Drive Master System Converter

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TrackerTD, first place winner of the SEGAbits third anniversary contest, put together this excellent video review of the Mega Drive Master System Converter, also known as the SEGA Genesis Power Base Converter. It really is a sweet piece of tech, allowing Genesis and Mega Drive owners to play Master System games in both cartridge and card formats on their 16-bit console. Check out TrackerTD’s great video review above and make sure to browse and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. Congrats TrackerTD, and enjoy  AJ’s personal copy of Technocop for the Genesis, his Genesis model 2 and a copy of the official “SEGAbits Presents My Life with SEGA” DVD!

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SEGA Tunes: Power Drift’s Like the Wind

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You know what’s more awesome then classic SEGA arcade music? Obscure SEGA arcade music! I’ve never played Power Drift, but its soundtrack is still pretty damn awesome. This is just the sort of incredibly catchy, upbeat tune that I would expect from a classic SEGA title. Hope you enjoy it!

Power Drift’s soundtrack was composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi. He is one of the oldest SEGA composers still active and working within the company. You can find his website here.

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SEGA Memories: How Evolution proved that one man’s trash was another’s treasure

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For those of us who love video games, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the various consoles we’ve come in contact with throughout our lives have left behind their own unique memories. Gaming is an interactive medium, afterall, and it’s an art form that you don’t simply sit there and view, but one which you fully interact with. And it’s this interaction, I feel, that can make the experience so much more personal, by and large, than going to the movies for a couple of hours.

The Dreamcast, for me, was the system where I completed what had been my gradual transition from “childhood gamer” to “hardcore gamer.” It was when I went from simply playing multiplayer games with my friends, or games that I’d seen advertised on TV, to someone who actively looked up and discussed video games on the internet. It was when I began to follow the industry more closely and discover genres that I’d never known existed. And in the case of Evolution: The World of Sacred Device, it was my first real Japanese RPG experience.

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