One thing for sure is Sega-Sammy has had more periods of profitability in the consumer side than many videogames companies, even with the pachinko money.
That's the reason why this company came out as "The best Japanese Gaming Company" in 2012 by a famous business magazine in Japan , terminating the yearly title for Nintendo . In 2013, it was Bandai-Namco.
Another thing is that Sega has more value than Sammy. You can see that companies like Tecmo-Koei or Namco-Bandai became Koei-Tecmo and Bandai-Namco respectively because of the value and the shares on the stock of one side is bigger than the other side.
Yeah Sammy really had the money and Sega had all the assets so it was a sweet deal for Sammy and they've grown as a company since then. Sammy after all has got a stranglehold on the panchinko industry by buying up half their rivals..something they would not been able to do if they had not merged with Sega.
I remember that some fan boys wanted Namco to merge with Sega just to get a VF vs Tekken game, thank god that never happened..as well as the fact that at the time Namco was in the red more than Sega was at that period.
All that merger did was spearhead the others to merge as well but not many has had the real big money success as Sega sammy has since they were the first video game company to merge.