Sega has revealed its three-point plan to extend the life of its old IPs in an annual financial report by SegaSammy.
The report highlights that sales of its five biggest IPs: Sonic the Hedgehog, Persona, Yakuza, Phantasy Star Online and Total War, have increased by 40% over last year’s sales. It goes on to clarify its strategy for utilising its existing IPs in the future.
The report gives the example of Persona 4 Golden which sold over 1million copies on Steam despite being re-released eight years after the original. Sega uses this to explain how it intends to use existing IPs to increase sales.
NME has translated the following from the report:
“This example shows that previous titles are still good enough to be sold today. Sega has a long history of IPs which we intend to remake, remaster etc, so that the quality matches the current market, and they can be re-released successfully. This is our strategy. As we expect digital sales to continue to progress over physical releases, we predict our games will sell as ‘long tail titles’ free from the difficulties of physical production.”
Long tail titles are games which continue to sell well after their original release. Its strategy to focus on successfully re-releasing older games from Sega’s library of popular IPs would fit into this category.
It explains its three-point plan to investors as: “Remaster – HD versions of past games, Remake – Significant additions to past games which maintain their gameplay, and Reboot – Maintaining the world of an original IP but transforming it into a new game.”
In the same report, it also announced that the Persona series, which is renowned for new ports and remasters of old titles, has sold over 15 million items digitally and physically, including games, pachinko licenses and merchandise.
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