Sega recently published its financial report for the year ending March 2019, and it's not been a great one. While overall sales increased, profits declined for the second consecutive year, with digital games and its slot machines seeing the worst results. In light of this, Sega is refocusing its efforts abroad, particularly when it comes to packaged games and ports.
Initially, 12 purely digital games were planned for the year, but only eight of them were released. Delays, competition, market saturation and simply taking on too many games are all cited as reasons for the decline in profit.
On the packaged games front, which includes Yakuza 6 and Football Manager 2019, sales decreased but profits rose thanks to repeat sales in North America and Europe. Sega expanded its efforts abroad and believes that, along with the higher quality of its games, also contributed to a successful year, at least for this part of the business.
Sega's plan for the next year is to focus on what's already working for the publisher. It expects the domestic Japanese market to stagnate, so it will be looking to the rest of Asia, North America and Europe when it comes to mobile, PC and packaged games.
Expect to see more Japanese console games ported over to PC, too. Sega's plan is to put more of its series on more platforms, including Yakuza and Persona. We've already started to see this, with several Yakuza games making their way onto PC, and they've been very welcome additions to Steam's catalogue. Check out Phil's review of Yakuza 0, the best of the bunch.
I've definitely put too much time into Persona 5 on PS4 to even consider picking it up again on PC, but I'm still eager to see it make the jump. I'd prefer Persona 3, though. I got a bug that killed my save data after 90 hours, so I never finished it. C'mon Sega, help me out.
Cheers, TweakTown.