Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Sega Announces Alien: Isolation Shipments Of 2.1 Million, Blames ‘Harsh Market Environment’
Sega announced its financial performance for the year ending March 31, 2015 today. The company posted net losses of ¥11.26 billion ($93.9 million) down from from profits of ¥30.72 billion ($256.1 million) last year. The company also suffered from a 54.3 percent drop in operating income indicating a drop in corporate efficiency.
In addition to its flagging financial performance, Sega released shipment numbers for some of its titles from last year. The company has sold 2.11 million copies of Alien: Isolation to retail.
The combined shipment numbers for the Wii U and 3DS Sonic Boom titles are 620,000. Sega attributes problems to a softening in the market and transition to mobile gaming. “Performance in the field was weak due to the harsh market environment,” the company writes.
Sega shipped 12.3 million boxed games, with 5.2 million going to Europe, 4.95 million to North America, and 2.14 million to Japan. Conversely, the company says that digital sales for mobile phones, smartphones, and PCs were strong.
Sega is in the process of reconfiguring its business to focus on those areas it deems of greater potential: smartphones and PC. The company is moving from its long-time home in San Francisco and has laid off a number of staff as it prepares to move to southern California.
With the ongoing changes happening internally, Sega will not have its own booth at E3 this year. Instead, the company tells us that it will partner up to show some of its titles at other booths.
Our Take
None of this is a surprise, but what did pique my interest was the complete absence of Atlus’ name in either of the documents linked in the sourcing above. Given the popularity of that brand and the smart curation of titles released in North America and Europe, I suspect that no mention is good news.
Sega is changing, but we’ll still likely get core games from the company (especially from Creative Assembly and Relic). I expect a streamlining on consoles that will prioritize quality over popularity of a certain blue mascot.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
