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

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.

What's interesting here is sega admits that sales are not as good as they usually make them out to be on social media, though they don't specify which titles. When Infinite Wealth's sales were accidentally leaked a few months ago and it was only at 1.6m that was definitely low considering the increased effort they're putting into these games.