Sega blames poor financial quarter on “weak” sales of recent games

Sega has reported poor financial results for the past quarter, due to the “weak” performance of some recent releases.

While specific sales have not been noted in its latest report, games released in the last quarter include Sonic Superstars, Persona 5 Tactica, Total War: Pharaoh, and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.

However, its latest releases suggest a more positive quarter is on the horizon, despite the company lowering its forecast.

Sega's Entertainment sector had sales of 219.3m yen in the last quarter (an increase of 4.2 percent year-on-year), but ordinary income of 19.7m yen – a drop of 52.5 percent year-on-year.

The sales increase was due to the acquisition of mobile games studio Rovio, Sega said, but profit decreased as some new titles “went weak.”

Back in December, Total War developer Creative Assembly apologized for “missteps” with the series and offered partial refunds of Pharaoh on Steam due to criticism of its high price and lack of content.

Sonic Superstars, meanwhile, was impacted by Nintendo's simultaneous release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Sega said in its previous financial presentation.

As for Like A Dragon Gaiden and Persona 5 Tactica, two bigger games in both series have been released in the past month to huge success.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth hit 1m sales in its first week to become the fast-selling game in the series. On Steam, it was the series' biggest launch to date.

Meanwhile Persona 3 Reload is the fastest-selling Atlus game ever, with 1m sales in less than a week.

The future is rosier, then, and Atlus has another game up its sleeve in the near future with strategy RPG Unicorn Overlord from developer Vanillaware.