SEGA Admits New Game Sales “Fell Short Of Expectations” In 2025, Says “Complete Editions” Partly To Blame
Despite major releases like Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, SEGA’s latest financial disclosure has revealed that 2025 was a particularly rough year for their new game sales, particularly due to players having wised up to the company’s habit of eventually releasing “complete editions”.
As reported in Sega Sammy’s FY2025 Q2 financial results, as initially detailed via live presentation on November 7th and only presented in written (and thus, with help from ChatGPT, machine translatable) form just earlier today, the six-month period from April – September 2025 saw the Sonic the Hedgehog parent company move roughly 10.8 million video game units across its total library, with 1.8 million of those being new games and the other 9 million being old titles.
And while not entirely terrible results on their own, they represent a stark drop compared to last year, where in the same period SEGA’s sales totaled 12.4 million, as made up of 1.02 million new game units and 11.4 million of those already released – a drop of roughly 1.6 million total units.
In addition to the two aforementioned titles, SEGA’s major releases for the years included Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O., Two Point Museum, Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, and the thus far Japanese arcade-exclusive Maimai DX CiRCLE.
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Pressed during the investor Q&A portion of their presentation as to what exactly led to this sales slump, SEGA leadership explained, “We believe potential factors include the presence of competing titles in the same genre, pricing at launch, and concerns about so-called ‘complete editions’ being released later, which may lead to consumers holding off on purchases.”
“Additionally, while the exact cause remains unclear, we believe there are also marketing challenges, such as failing to sufficiently convey the game’s appeal to users. We are currently analyzing this. Given that the quality of games like Sonic Racing CrossWorld is highly praised, we aim to build sales performance by analyzing and addressing these challenges.”
And in proving how shaky SEGA’s recent player turn out has been, when pressed as to how well their new F2P Fall Guys clone Sonic Rumble had fared in the roughly three weeks since its release, the company indicated that its install base was less than they had hoped, telling investors “It’s only been about two days since service began on November 5th, but user feedback has been positive, and we feel it’s gotten off to a generally smooth start. We’ll continue working to get more users playing.”
While it’s far from the only reason for their sales slumps – other notable factors include their relatively light release slate across 2025 and the American market’s current economic struggles – SEGA is absolutely correct in tagging ‘complete editions’ as a significant factor in this downturn.
Notable for providing all of a game’s previously-released DLC (and oftentimes brand-new content) in one discounted package, such complete editions have come to make up a good chunk of SEGA’s catalog, with the last three-years alone seeing the releases of Persona 3 Reload (with a planned Persona 4 remake on the way), Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Shin Megami Tensei: Vengeance, Sonic X Shadow Generations, and Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut.
As such, is it really any surprise that players have wised up to the the game, and instead of paying full-price for a title and all of its subsequent DLC have taken to just holding out until they can snag the ‘better’ version that they all-but-100%-know is eventually coming down the pipe.
As the old adage goes, ‘Vote with your wallet’ – and it’s clear that SEGA fans have voted for the company to knock it off with their nickel-and-diming nonsense.
