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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.

Sega is aware its past “definitive version” releases could be deterring players from buying games at launch - AUTOMATON WEST

Sega’s full-price games aren’t selling much compared to how highly they’re rated, and the company cites "definitive editions" as one of the possible reasons.

automaton-media.com

 

[Baemono]

 

[Punished Miku]

"Sega's full-price games aren't selling much compared to how highly they're rated"

So drop the rating down a bit and then everything is fixed. I think Metaphor is currently a 94 on MC.

 

[ReyBrujo]

At least in the Switch circles you can see people waiting for them, yeah. People want the full game with all DLC included in the cartridge and sometimes wait until it is launched, especially if their backlog is large. Not sure why they just don't buy it and then sell it to get the definitive version, though. And in the specific case of Switch there are some countries which have cartridges but don't have an eshop (like the Middle East region) so Nintendo launches cartridges with all the patches and DLC in them (like Pokémon Scarlet plus all DLC in cartridge, which other regions don't have), some collectors wait for that one (though they aren't the most).

 

[Da1337Vinci]

Metaphor is cool and new IP and all.
But where are the waifus at though?

 

[Metnut]

These Atlus RPGs are already too long and bloated. Who needs the "definitive" edition with another 15-20 hours of content pushing these mostly linear games well over 100 hours to completion?

 

[BlackTron]

Big brain Nintendo figured it out: never release a definitive edition. Even now you have to buy the DLC for BOTW separately. On top of the Switch 2 Edition.

On the one hand, they suck. On the other hand, if the next Zelda is a complete quality game on the cart, there's no reason to wait a day, because a better deal is never coming lol.

They know how to stay focused on the long game, I give them that.