Yakuza Series Sales Grow While Persona 5 Royal Breaks Records in the West; Total War Also Performs Strongly

Sega hosted a web briefing for analysts and institutional investors and the transcript includes interesting information about the performance of some key franchises.

We learn that the Football Manager series grew about 10% in sales with Football Manager 2020 compared to 5% growth registered in the past year, likely due to delays and cancellation of real-world soccer leagues.

The Total War series continues to perform strongly led by Total War: Three Kingdoms, but this also applies to older games of the franchise.

The launch of Yakuza: Like a Dragon has propelled growth in sales of past numbered titles of the Yakuza series, while Persona 5 Royal achieved record sales in America and Europe.

The ratio of digital sales has grown exponentially with physical sales impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s still strong in the current fiscal year.

At first, it grew noticeably in Italy and Spain, then in the United Kingdom, France, North America, and more. The growth rate can be seen changing quickly according to the situation related to the pandemic.

Since digital sales can have a long tail without concerns about shelf space, Sega sees the ratio increasing further in the future. The company believes this will lead to an increase in profitability.

With the release of the Yakuza series on Xbox Game Pass, multi-platform expansion is progressing, and Sega is preparing to deploy its games for the new platforms as well.

Speaking of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Sega is considering changing promotion strategy due to the delay of the real Olympic games. That being said, the game has continued to sell consistently alongside Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game, which continued to generate repeat sales. Sega also mentions that the Nintendo Switch itself is doing well and its digital distribution ratio is improving, which is having a positive effect. The games are expected to keep selling for a long time and contribute to profits as the promotion for the Olympic Games resumes.