Things are going from bad to worse for Sega.
The now infamous ad campaign for the Sega Megadrive (or Genesis, for you scruffy colonists) once proudly proclaimed that “Sega does what Nintendon’t.” What Sega does that Nintendo does not, for the past few years at least, is lose vast stacks of money. While Nintendo has been having a fairly miserable time of it these past few months its age-old, and sadly mostly vanquished, rival Sega has been faring even worse.
Despite releasing several high-profile titles, including the latest installment in the critically acclaimed Shogun series, Sega has managed to lose a whopping $50 million dollars in the past three months, a vast increase from the mere $8.23 million it lost in the same period last year. Sega Sammy, the company brought about when Pachinko machine giant Sammy (which, I must stress, is a company, not an actual giant.) bought out Sega back in 2004, managed to offset that loss somewhat with earnings from its sprawling casual gambling empire, but still ended up reporting an overall loss of $28.8 million.
Though the two companies are really no longer comparable, Sega’s plight does put Nintendo’s recent performance into perspective. President and CEO Satoru Iwata took a 50% pay cut in response to Nintendo going from insanely profitable to merely quite profitable. One wonders how much of a pay cut Sega Sammy CEO Hajime Satomi would have to take to account for a near thirty million dollar loss.
Source: Gameindustry.biz.
