Sega’s Q1 Software Sale…Fail!

I believe gamers of my generation fall into two categories depending on what console you were brought up on.  Why not spare a moment and reflect upon this train of thought with me. The Nintendo category, which covers the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and the SEGA category that covers the SEGA Master System and the SEGA Mega Drive.

I fall into category two, having been a keen follower of SEGA for some time, even though now-a-days I don’t own many SEGA products or games but I still have that devotion in me to the company that pretty much got me into gaming. Through thick and thin, whatever mess they get themselves into, I’ll be thinking “come on, you can pull yourselves out of this rut.”

Where am I going with this?  Well SEGA’s first quarter sales results have come in and things are not looking pretty at all.  Let me get the boring bit out of the way; here come some figures.  SEGA Sammy Holdings have revealed the results for the first quarter which are a total of 60.4 billion Yen, which is about $636 million or £377 million. Sounds quite a lot but for SEGA that is a 19 percent drop in sales compared to the same Quarter last year,  meaning the company have a net loss of 10.3 billion Yen equivalent to $108/£64 million… Ouch!

But that’s not all.  SEGA’s consumer sector (one of the four businesses that makes up the company) saw a drop of 41 percent in profit compared to last years takings.  That’s almost half the profit the company earned last year!  Not looking good for Sega at all.

So where’s the gaming giant going wrong?  Surely with titles such as Virtua Tennis 2009, The Conduit and Japanese PSP title Hatsune Miku – Project Diva, they must be raking it in, right? Wrong, even though those titles happened to sell quite a few units, it just wasn’t enough for the company and it seems SEGA have not come up with enough big releases this quarter to get the profit they desired.  In Q1 2008 the company released such titles as:  Sega Ultimate Collection, The Club, Condemed 2: Bloodshot, Universe at War: Earth Assault and Ghost Squad amongst others.  This, I will remind you, gave them 19 percent more net profit than the first quarter of this year!  2009 has looked pretty dire for blockbuster titles from the company, compared to some of the games we got from them last year.

But I believe that there is light at the end of this very long, very dark tunnel for SEGA.  They still have a couple of aces up their sleeves for this year.  Such as Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games and Bayonetta, which will probably give them a boost in unit sales come the end of 2009.  Personally, I think Bayonetta will get Capcom fans interested, seeing as the creator of the Devil May Cry series has stepped in and helped Platinum Games on what looks to be a great third person action game.

Overall, my personal opinion is that they should bring Sonic back to his gaming roots. Sure they kind of did it in Sonic Unleashed but that was only for half of the game. If they did a game purely on the platform game aspect for the current generation I think they would be onto a winner.

My fingers are crossed for SEGA.  I am hoping they can buck up and get back on form by the end of this year.  I don’t want to see a legendary company like them go down the same road as Sonic Team, who lets be honest, seem to be throwing shit at the wall hoping something, anything, sticks.