SEGA: The game has received a lot of praise but sales have not increased yet! – Game News

SEGA said that many of the company’s recent titles have received very positive reviews from critics, but this has not yet translated into higher sales as expected. Therefore, the company is planning to improve its marketing and sales strategies to better take advantage of the appeal of its products.

Over the past 18 months or so, SEGA and its subsidiary ATLUS have released many critically acclaimed games. This list includes Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Two Point Museum, Metaphor: ReFantazio and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. These games all score quite high on review aggregator sites like Metacritic.

However, in the Q&A section of the latest financial report, SEGA admitted that high ratings from experts have not helped game sales grow commensurately. The company did not specifically mention each game in the report, but Sega has said so before Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds did not meet initial sales expectations.

When asked about future challenges for fully released titles, SEGA said that the development costs of its flagship projects are currently still lower than many large AAA projects in the industry. The company believes its strengths lie in the quality of its products and the positive reviews its games receive.

However, SEGA also admitted that these high ratings have not helped significantly increase the number of copies sold. According to the company, in addition to continuing to improve game development capacity, there is still much room to improve “sales power”, meaning marketing activities and distribution systems.

SEGA said it is undergoing reforms in this area to expand the scale of future sales. The company also admitted that it is still “slower” than some other major Japanese game publishers in areas such as digital sales and data-driven marketing.

An often mentioned example is Capcom, a company that has achieved much success by leveraging user data to optimize its game sales strategy on digital platforms.

To improve the situation, SEGA is reviewing the structure of its current publishing department, which is organized into separate regions. In the future, the company plans to switch to a more unified global strategy model to optimize marketing and sales activities in multiple markets at the same time.

In addition, SEGA also plans to enhance data analysis to optimize digital game sales prices by region. The company also wants to shift its marketing focus from promoting individual titles to an IP brand-based strategy, aiming to maximize long-term revenue, including repeat sales after the game has launched.

The Q&A section in this financial report was answered by Chairman Haruki Satomi and Group Chief Financial Officer Koichi Fukazawa. SEGA has also made changes in leadership in recent years to promote the company’s globalization strategy.

From 2024, Shuji Utsumi took on the role of President of SEGA and began promoting many changes in the way games were developed and published. One of the new directions is to ensure that the Japanese and international versions of the game are released at the same time, and launch simultaneously on multiple platforms including PC.

According to Utsumi, in the past SEGA often released games in Japan first, then expanded to the international market. This process change helps studios prepare global content and marketing strategies from the early stages of development, thereby improving the way teams think and design games for international markets.