Sega Sammy Holdings recently published a summary of a shareholders’ Q&A session that took place during the company’s second quarter financial briefing for the fiscal year ending March 2026. As reported by GameBiz, the Q&A session covered a range of topics, including a sudden drop in sales of catalogue titles (games released during past fiscal years) compared to the previous year, and revenue fluctuations largely impacted by some of Sega’s new full-price and free-to-play titles. Namely, it was brought up that Sega has released a number of critically acclaimed titles in the past couple of years, but despite the positive reception and high praise for their quality, sales performance fell short of expectations.
Addressing the issue, Sega explained that some of the possible causes could be the presence of rival titles in the same genres, as well as the games’ initial pricings. The company also pointed out that players expecting “definitive editions” of games to be released in the future could be what’s making them hesitant to buy the titles at launch. “While we haven’t been able to pinpoint a precise cause of [the lower-than-expected sales performance], we believe the problem also lies in our marketing, which wasn’t able to sufficiently convey the appeal of our games to users,” said Sega’s spokespersons, reassuring investors that they are currently analyzing the problem.
While the underperforming titles in question weren’t specified, players in Japan theorize the “definitive edition” problem could likely be linked to games developed by Atlus. As one of the more recent examples, Shin Megami Tensei V was released in late 2021, and an updated version, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, launched in mid-2024, less than 3 years later. This seems to be the standard pattern for many of Atlus’ new releases, including the Persona series.
When it comes to sales, Atlus’ critically acclaimed RPG Metaphor: ReFantzio sold 1 million units on day one, which was an incredible feat for Sega. However, the title witnessed a sharper drop in sales post-launch, reaching 2 million units only around half a year after its debut (as reported by GameRant). Of course, there are various different factors contributing to how dales fluctuate, but it does seem like some players are waiting for a “definitive edition” of the game to drop in a couple of years – hence the hesitation to buy the base game.
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Or maybe no one has enough money to buy games full price anymore.
Wholeheartedly agree with the thought. When I first bought Persona 5, literally a week later Royal was announced and coming out soon. I still haven’t played SMTV in my backlog and knowing a more complete version now exists, I feel robbed. I buy plenty of Sega titles but I do hesitate with the Atlus branch because of this.
There are so many quality triple -a anime games nowadays like genshin. why play sega games at launch when you can wait for the definitive edition at deep discount years later. it’s not like there’s no other games to play like I said too many competition nowadays
Even free story updates are starting to get on my nerves. I waited throughout the entire Hades II early access before playing it cause i wanted to play the completed game, but 1.1 was announced and it just took the wind from my sails.
“Stop releasing unfinished games” used to refer to unpolished and buggy games to me, but now it’s free content patches, definitive editions, episodic releases… i just wanna play a full game without having to go back and replay it
Im one of the people who bought SMT V close to launch… Vengeance being launched close to 2 years later made me incredibly angry, as I had to rebuy the game to get all the content that should’ve been offered as an upgrade DLC for owners of the base game… after that Im NEVER buying a game until they release the “Definitive” variant with all DLC included.