Sega has released its financial information for the fiscal year ending in March 2024, and while profits are up, the in-depth picture is a bit more complicated than that might suggest.
According to Sega's end-of-year presentation, profits have jumped from 46.7 billion yen last year to 56.8 billion this year, but that increase is mostly thanks to the pachislot and pachinko side of the business, where profits have doubled since last year.
Gaming, meanwhile, is down from 38.7 billion yen last year to 28.9 billion this year, which Sega attributes to "loss from structural reform in Europe", likely a reference to its sale of Company of Heroes developer Relic and the cancellation of Creative Assembly's live-service game Hyenas.
Despite profits being down, Sega has enjoyed a couple of successes this year, which it points to in the presentation.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, for example, sold a million copies within its first week on release, making it the fastest-selling game in the Like a Dragon (nee Yakuza) series.
Persona 3 Reload achieved the same feat for not only its own series, but also publisher Atlus in general, while strategy game Unicorn Overlord achieved 500,000 sales within its first few weeks on release, which isn't too shabby for a niche developer like Vanillaware.
Although these successes are impressive, Sega still points to its pachislot business as the key reason for its profit increase this year, which makes sense; it's an area in which other publishers like Konami are also heavily invested.
Sega says that pachinko is "weak in the current situation", but that pachislot is "strong", which is probably why the company appears to be introducing its pachislot machines to the North American market.
One of the changes associated with Sega's new "Welcome to the Next Level" corporate plan involves "entering the online gaming market in North America", with "online gaming" here referring to pachinko and pachislot machines, as well as other physical amusements.
Sega's much-touted "Super Game" project, meanwhile, remains AWOL, and appears to have been delayed from 2026 to 2028. According to the presentation, Sega expects said game to make a "full-scale contribution to earnings" from the 2028 fiscal year onwards.
In terms of Sega's future, the company is predicting a drop in profits next year owing to a "reactionary decline in pachislot and pachinko".
However, the release of the upcoming Sonic x Shadow Generations, as well as the launch of a new Atlus IP (presumably Metaphor Re:Fantazio), lead Sega to predict an increase in sales and profits across the gaming sector.
We'll have to wait and see if that plays out. In the meantime, you can check out Sega's supplementary financial documents here and here if you're in the mood to get seriously nerdy with your stats. Stay tuned for more!
