Mike Hayes: Sonic 4 Episode 1 Sold Over 1 Million, Episode 2 Info Coming Soon

From vg247.com comes information from SEGA CEO Mike Hayes concerning Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Remember that game? Regarding information on Episode 2:

Information on Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 will arrive “very soon,” Sega West CEO Mike Hayes has told VG247. Hayes couldn’t comment further when asked how far out “soon” was, adding that we should “look out for that one.”

My guess is once Sonic Generations arrives, after November 1st, or perhaps on September 9th? Remember, that was when the first Sonic 4 episode was announced as “Project Needlemouse”. Speaking of the first episode, Hayes shares a great bit of news for SEGA fans who like it when the company makes big money:

“It did very well and it continues to do well,” Hayes told us in a phone interview this afternoon.

“Particularly when it gets a little shot in the arm with some promotion or some price activity, sales are quite phenomenal. Its downloaded clearly over a million units, so its sold particularly well and continues to sell.”

Over a million is pretty impressive, though I have to wonder how many “copies” the game sold when it initially launched before the first sales began. Regardless, Sonic 4 Episode 1 looks like quite a financial success. Here’s hoping Episode 2 fixes the problems found in the first episode and sells another million and more!

[Source: vg247]

High Voltage: Conduit made profit, don’t need to sell a million


I know that The Conduit didn’t light up the charts like we all here thought it was going to do. But does that mean it was a failure? Nope, according to the team, if Conduit 2 sells the same number of copies as the first, it will be a success.

“That’s a misnomer in our industry. By and large people look at it and they say, if it’s not a million unit seller it’s a flop. That’s preposterous. If I make this bottle of Coke, and let’s say there’s 10 pence of materials here – coloured water, sugar and a glass bottle – if I sell this for a pound, I’ve just made money. Whatever the product is, if it costs you less to make than you end up making off the thing, you make profit. As long as the profit margin is strong enough, then you get enough of a return and you can make another. The biggest misconception of consumers of the industry is that million-unit benchmark. When you really look at the number of games a year that sell over a million units, it’s almost none of them. If that really were the minimum bar for a success, the game industry would be gone in under a year. There are thousands of games released that don’t sell a million units. There are like 10 games a year that sell over a million units. But if you can sell a few hundred thousand copies – 300, 400 thousand copies, which is in the range that we did – we made money off that. We did well. Although it was a considerable budget for a Wii title, it was not the kind of budget a Gears of War had. If we’d spent the Gears of War money, then we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion now. We’d be back working on something else. We’d always like to make money. Everyone would. But if we sold the exact same number of units as we sold with Conduit 1, we’d be high-fiving each other. But I think we’ll do better.” – High Voltage’s Eric Nofsinger

Good for the team, should be able to make its money back at at least.

[Source: GoNintendo]

SEGA-Sammy Q3: $451 million in net income

SEGA-Sammy has posted a net income of ¥36,821 million (about $451 million), that’s 117.3% increased compared to last year. So what branch of SEGA made the most money? Not a big surprise. Pachinco/Pachislots division ranked in ¥54,666 million(about $670 million) operating income.

Coming in at a hot second was Amusement Machine Sales, which had a operating income of ¥8,458 million (about $103 million). Guess who isn’t losing money and didn’t come dead last? Consumer Business (SEGA you know and love, they make those games you play). They brought in an operating income of ¥2,811 million(about $34 million). Congrats SEGA!

SEGA-Sammy earnings report


Here we go, I usually dread these things because I have to post how much money SEGA loses, but this time around I get to talk about how much money they earned. So put your spandex pants on and get ready.

SEGA-Sammy’s fiscal year ends on March 31st, 2010.  The company, as a whole, saw a 10.4% drop in sales to ¥384,679, but saw a 399% increase in operating income to ¥36,712 million.

Hit the jump for a break down…

SEGA-Sammy expecting $194 million profit


SEGA-Sammy have been losing money for a while now and it seems they are finally getting the hang of things. They have posted that they expect to make $194 million dollar profit in the end of this fiscal year.

Things to note, Pachinco & Amusement Machine sales saw an improvement; while Amusement Facilities & Consumer business made less income than they thought it would. As for consumer business (Consoles, etc.) they were expecting  to sell 29.7 million units of software, but that guess has been lowered to 26.3 million units.

What game didn’t hit expectations? It might be Resonance of Fate. What do you guys think?

[Thanks Suzuki Yu]