Alien: Isolation and Sonic fall short of Sega’s expectations

Sega has described its full-year software unit sales as weak” for the 12 months ending March.

That’s despite a 41 per cent jump in annual unit sales, but reflects its disappointment in both critical hit Alien: Isolation and critical flop Sonic Boom, which sold 2.1m and 620k units respectively.

The latter represents the worst ever performance for a Sonic title, whose Nintendo exclusivity would have compounded its scorching at the hands of reviewers.

It blamed the sales disappointment on a harsh market environment”.

On the plus side, the Persona series has now passed 6m units sold.

In total the company sold 12.3m units in the period, which was 1m ahead of expectations. Video games revenues were up 11 per cent at over $925m, with physical and digital split almost precisely 50/50.

Sega’s overall operating income doubled year-on-year to $33.4m. Overall revenues fell 6.1 per cent to $2.96bn. A net loss of $94m was also reported.

The company currently offers well over 100 mobile titles in Japan and expects to add close to another 50 in the year ahead – only one of which will be free-to-play, incidentally.