Sega has been in the news quite a bit since the end of January. It all began with the announcement that the company would be cutting back in 2015, over 300 employees would be offered early retirement, offices would be closed and they would refocus the company towards PC and mobile games. They were in the news again when Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly developed, Sega published) was nominated for six BAFTA game awards.
The sandwich of news must be made, bad-good-bad. Essentially, the good news was there to cushion more bad news. Sonic Boom, the Sonic game that hit both the 3DS and Wii U, only sold 490K (that's less than the amount of people living in Frenso, California!) units across Europe, Japan and the United States. This number adds to the slow decline in sales for Sonic games, Sonic Lost World (the game prior to Sonic Boom) sold 710,000 copies. Before Lost World, Sonic Generations sold 1,850,000 and Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed sold over a million copies, according to IGN.
These sales figures offer us more insight on why the company decided to cut back and refocus in 2015.
Here's a brief look at the sales from the Sega earning call:
Alien: Isolation
- Europe, US
- PS3, PS4, Xbox360, XboxOne, PC
- 1,760,000
Football Manager 2015
- Europe, US
- PC
- 640,000
Sonic Boom
- Japan, US, Europe
- Wii U & 3DS
- 490,000
[Sega]
