Sega Announces Financial Results in Line With Expectations; Waits for Bigger Game Releases from Q2

Today Sega released its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year that will end on March 31, 2023.

Looking at the whole company sales were 66,118 million yen (up 11.2% year-on-year) while op oerating income was 2,777 million yen (down 27.8% year-on-year).

Ordinary income was 4,255 million yen (up 22.1% year-on-year).

The Entertainment Contents business, which includes games, recorded 52,778 million yen in sales (up 11.3% year-on-year) and ordinary income was 8,142 million yen (down 4.6% year-on-year).

Overall results for the quarter were “generally in line with expectations.” Repeat sales for older titles were slightly below expectations, but free-to-play games performed strongly.

That being said, Sega’s forecast for the full fiscal year are above the previous fiscal year on all metrics, as they’re going to release a bunch of potentially strong title starting from Q2 onward, including Soul Hackers 2, Sonic Frontiers, the Persona remasters/ports, and more.

We also hear that Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! performed strongly in the free-to-play portion of the business, and the publisher plans to release another free-to-play game before the end if the fiscal year in March 2023.

Below you can see the sales trend of full games and free-to-play games compared to previous quarters.

Incidentally, the three full games released in the quarter examined are 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim for Switch, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix+ for PC, and Sonic Origins.

The last interesting piece of data is that unit sales in the past quarter were 1.46 million for the Sonic franchise, 420,000 for the Total War franchise, 270,000 for the Persona franchise, and 470,000 for the Yakuza franchise (including the Judgment series).

If you’d like to compare with historical data, you can check out the results from the previous quarter, released in April.