Sega mistakenly reveals sales numbers of popular games | Hacker News Reader

Sega mistakenly reveals sales numbers of popular games

gematsu.com

213 pointskelt218 comments

The real story here is the highlighting of the flawed attempt to redact a document.

Happens a lot.

The only foolproof way I trust is to redact it digitally, print it on paper, and scan it.

I’ve used bad redaction to my advantage at work to make money, I’m all for other people using bad redaction techniques :)

> I’ve used bad redaction to my advantage at work to make money

You've certainly piqued my curiosity. Can you say any more?

Probably trading of some sort?

I sell construction work. Sometimes my customers will have me price up something that someone else priced to them and they will send me a competitor’s redacted scope letter with the pricing blanked out so I can bid ‘apples to apples’ aka the same scope of work.

I’ve unredacted proposals using the ‘unflatten’ command in Bluebeam Revu (which is by far the best PDF editor) which allowed me to underbid my competitor and win the job (and at a higher price than I would’ve submitted).

Definitely an ethical grey area, but an edge is an edge ;)

I really don't think this is grey, I think these cases have clear legal implications, though I'm not a lawyer. You are circumventing redaction, regardless of how boneheaded it is, the intent was clear.

I'd not do this if I were you.

The information was in the document they sent me, they should’ve removed it completely if they didn’t want me to see it. The situation is identical to them mailing me a paper copy with a black piece of paper scotch taped over the price.

There are zero legal implications, it was a private contract. My customers regularly tell me the exact price that my competitors have submitted to them and that isn’t illegal.

Probably there are legal implications for attorneys circumventing redaction in legal documents but construction proposal letters have no protections against unredaction.

I would be really surprised if there was a law against this, and even if there was who really cares? As long as you don't make it super obvious (like consistently bid 1p under the competition) nobody will know.

Morally gray, sure.

Legally, I can't see what's wrong with using information that you have, even if the other party didn't intend for you to have it. Lawyers themselves will use information in court that was accidentally sent to them by a counter-party, and that the other lawyer never intended them to have.

It may be technically an issue with some government bids, if you need to file an affidavit certifying you had no such knowledge.

But how would they prove it? And, doing so would reveal that they fucked up in the first place by sending it to you.

There's no way there's a legal case that can be made against him imo

What if you just block out text in PDF, then Print to PDF - does that retain the text behind the black block?

If it does, then Export to PNG almost certainly removes it (while also removing all other selectable text)

That sounds pretty foolproof so long as your black box fill method doesn't fill with a 99% opacity, or a flood fill leaves behind a few invisible anti-aliased pixels, or the merge operation of the black box doesn't result in some multiplication leaving a few bits of difference. Even if you erased the layer below, then filled above, I've had erasures vary in the bits outside the alpha channel messing up games using the texture info.

Overall, I kind of understand the paranoia even though in principle it does sound pretty foolproof.

Wouldn’t all those fears apply to printing as well?

The alpha channel ones would not apply to printing, and overall printing is an extremely lossy operation, where all those minute details get washed out in approximate ink levels and the muddiness of the physical world. It might not be totally foolproof, esp for a very accurate print process (don't use your photo printer maybe), but it's probably many orders of magnitude noisier..

I think if you're really concerned, you'd print it once, apply physical black tape on it (or cut out with a razor), then scan that :)

Printing would presumably have enough imprecision to mask those.

>What if you just block out text in PDF, then Print to PDF - does that retain the text behind the black block?

Possibly depending on the application you use to print and the printer driver. Acrobat has some unexpected behaviours when printing.

Print single-sided. Otherwise there's a risk that nominally invisible bleed through from the other side can be enhanced. It's better to just convert a PDF to images directly and redact that.

That is the EXACT process I automated the non-redacting parts of using cron jobs and task folders at a past job.

Flatten everything to a set of just images.

Have normal human staff draw black boxes over anything to be redacted.

Compose a new 'PDF' that's a set of 'scanned' images.

I wonder if using certain kinds of inks could cause slight differences in reflectivity over the redacted text, leaving artifacts that could be used to reconstruct the text in scanned documents? Seems like applying strips of opaque tape over the redacted text might be the most certain method, though maybe overkill after all.

This was sort-of the winning solution to an underhanded C contest to redact an image. Hazily remembered, but the winner used a trick where already black pixels got redacted to one color black and already white pixels got to an ever so slightly different black. Reversing the image would then make it trivial to read the original black-on-white text.

I remember that one: the two blacks were not slightly different, they were both exactly black but written in different ways.

The image was in PPM format, which stores the color components of the pixels as ASCII text (so a white pixel is stored as "255 255 255" and a black one is "0 0 0"). To redact the image, the code replaced every digit of the numbers with '0', so white became "000 000 000" and black stayed as "0 0 0". Both are black and indistinguishable if you're viewing the image, but you can tell them apart by looking at the file text.

Sadly the UCC homepage seems to have vanished, but I found this account from the author: http://notanumber.net/archives/54/underhanded-c-the-leaky-re...

Ah right. Had to be sneaky enough to escape being outright flagged. A not-quite-black would have failed the test.

Not 100% sure offhand, but I _think_ the the final step in my process chain (repack everything into a PDF) would have converted the input image formats and thus defeated that type of input. As it was, they were effectively 'redacted' using MSpaint to clobber over the rasterized data, so I was more concerned with minimizing the file size.

You don't need to be that paranoid. Converting to a raster image format is sufficient.

I used to work at a company that requested a lot of documents from municipal governments. We found random people's SSNs on more than one occasion.

I should go sell to an intelligence agency a malicious PDF editor that covertly shares the plain text version any time someone uses the block out tool.

There are billions of PDF files out there, but the ones are being redacted are the most valuable of the lot.

Did they mean to redact though? The slide makes it seem like they are hidden because they are being adjusted, not because they are secret.

It’s amazing how valuable of an IP Sonic is. It still sells consistently well after all those years.

I’m surprised even more at the P5R sales! I might actually have to give it a real try— tried it a couple years ago (P5 non-R) and didn’t really take to it, but I was put off by the whole anime vibe.

If you're put off by the anime vibe then there's no point trying it at all, you won't like it. It is a very anime game

If you don't like the anime style, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is directly inspired by Persona's combat system but has a more mature tone. I liked it a lot, and it's 97% positive reviews on Steam, so you're likely to enjoy it too.

> directly inspired by Persona's combat system

That means they're both QTE based?

Turn based but with QTE elements

And you can even parry! In terms of parrying, for me it is harder and more satisfying than Sekiro's parry system(which was my number one game in terms of combat, now Clair Obscur has taken it's place).

How is it turn based when you get timed prompts to "press button not to die"?

How is hamburger not a salad when there are veggies in it?

Proportions matter.

When you select what action you want to do, the combat is paused and the game displays a menu.

Executing the action, dodging and parrying, and shooting ranged weapons all happen in real time.

It works really well in practice, combining both strategic and twitch gameplay.

Of course, if you like twitch gameplay, and if you can stomach twitch gameplay being labeled as "turn based".

I might agree with the former but I don't like false advertising.

I think the false advertising does great disservice to Clair Obscur. It turns off people who don’t like turn-based combat and ends up disappointing people who do like turn based combat. I very nearly bounced from what is a great game because it was not at all what I was expecting with respect to combat.

Clair Obscur’s combat would be better described as dodge and parry based as that is the primary mechanic. In terms of lineage, the combat is much closer to PunchOut than Final Fantasy 6.

It’s really fun if that is what you are expecting though.

Yes but their Steam page says:

"Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a ground-breaking turn-based RPG with unique real-time mechanics, making battles more immersive and addictive than ever."

Turns out the real time mechanics aren't unique. Not sure I want "addictive" battles or "addictive" gameplay either. Isn't that the realm of free to play?

The game is only about 30 hours and has no micro transactions. It is addictive until you beat it. Easily game of the year.

I know what it is, i read the reviews and decided to skip based on QTEs [1] :)

I still don't understand how "addictive" is a positive term.

[1] To preempt some complaining, I haven't touched an Ubisoft or EA title in at least 10 years. So it's not like I'm an AAA "consumer" that skips the darling indies.

If I had to defend the term addictive- presumably the addiction goes away when you beat the 30 hour game.

So it's not addictive in the ongoing, problematic way that cocaine would be.

Sounds a bit like Legend of Dragoon. I should play that game again some time, leaving it unfinished is a shame.

Oh wow thanks for the trip down memory lane. I guess some of the QTE elements do remind me of that and FF VIII limit breaks

You do not have to Parry. You do not have to dodge. Most od the game you can tank and heal or resurect.

I don't think that's true. I played the game and without doing some serious level grinding, you take too much damage for it to be viable to ignore the dodge/parry mechanic.

There are multiple guides on Youtube for both normal and expert. In practice some grinding in the first area is helpful and some fights are RNG heavy, but the majority of the game is actually really well balanced for it, especially since you get Pictos/Luminas and weapons specifically designed for that playstyle.

Personally, I killed Simon on my second try by rebuilding my party to intentionally die to his attacks, proc some key Luminas and trigger the start of a high damage combo. The game rewards creative builds and lateral thinking.

I played the game twice. First on normal then normal on NG+. I suck at both, parry and dodge and was able to do beat everything beside simon. So I think it is not necessary but game is much easier if you can counter.

Setting aside the big argument on whether Clair Obscur counts as turn-based, Persona 5 definitely does: it's more classically/rigidly turn-based than even the Final Fantasy games that use ATB.

>It’s amazing how valuable of an IP Sonic is. It still sells consistently well after all those years.

There have been ongoing movies and tv shows so each generation of kids grows up with Sonic.

Growing up I never had exposure to video games, so I didn't really know about Sonic until my son saw his face on some toy and IMMEDIATELY had questions. Who is that, what's his name, what does he do, ....

I think there's something about Sonic's face that is timeless, innate, prehistoric even.

It’s just cool. Cooler than Mario which is a fat plumber. Think of it as the difference between a Lamborghini (sonic) vs. VW beetle (Mario)

Sonic wins on aesthetics and style while Mario is popular entirely because of the quality of the games that have cemented Mario as timeless.

it sold well because i've bought a copy on every console. i'd play for 30 mins, get bored, and quit. it finally took after i played for 5 hours straight. i finally got 'it'. try playing it on break at work. you've really got to get a few hours in because the game's first level is basically a huge tutorial.

Sega is one of those companies quietly pumping out content for a loyal fan base. They don’t get as much limelight as Nintendo do with their IP, which is a shame because Sega’s games are definitely on a par with the stuff Nintendo release.

> It’s amazing how valuable of an IP Sonic is. It still sells consistently well after all those years.

It’s not as surprising when you consider Sonic is also mascot who they’ve ploughed millions into.

The movies will have definitely reignited some interest into Sonic too

> Sega is one of those companies quietly milking IP dry for a loyal fan base

That's more like it

When you look at pretty much every other brand out there, Sega aren’t nearly as aggressively milking their IPs.

They’re not even in the same league as Nintendo, Disney, Lego, etc. And when you look at other games companies from the same era (Capcom, Atari, etc) then you’d see that Sega are still releasing original content too vs the same rehashed shit that people buy purely because of the name.

Then on the other end of the spectrum you have companies buying studios and letting those games rot (like EA). Studios encouraging micro-transactions (Microsoft with Minecraft, EA, Roblox, Epic, etc) and even underage gambling with loot boxes. Shit that has no place in gaming. It’s Also Sega are one of the least aggressive companies out there “defending” their IP against fan-made content.

Sega are a massively underrated brand in today’s gaming landscape.

Look, as far as I'm concerned the continued existence of Atari is worth it solely because they keep on giving money to Jeff Minter to reinterpret their eighties coin-ops as weird psychedelic trips, not all of them work but they keep him and Giles and his sheep fed and give him time to tinker with his own weird games.

Any other decent Atari rehashes are pure lagniappe.

I didnt understand anything of what you said

Play Polybius, the recent I, Robot remake, and TxK/Tempest 4000 and my meaning will become clear. For extra credit also play the original 80's I, Robot and Tempest.

Sonic fans spend money regardless of game quality.

It's the same reason for the decade-long glut of capeshit. Hollywood found that (people who were then) teenage boys could be relied upon to show up for a superhero film, no matter how bad, provided it starred their favourite characters.

To be fair there were very few misses in Marvel until covid.

Same is true for most big games franchises though.

People continually buy the next EA sports game even though it’s basically just the old game but with the year incremented.

People still spend £50 on new copies of 10 year old Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8. And let’s be honest, the last great Mario game released was Super Mario Galaxy.

If there’s one thing you can guarantee, it’s that people will waste their money on stuff they like. And if there is one truism that HN commentators forget, it’s that software doesn’t need to be academically perfect to be good software for their particular target audience. In the case of games, it’s being more enjoyable than the alternative of not playing that game. Which, frankly, is a pretty low bar a lot of the time.

Power of the brand! I wonder how that (change) reflected on FIFA / FC for Electronic Arts.

EA is still doing fine financially, despite some duds. It turns out people buy fun, not names.

I've been under the impression that EA keeps selling football games, and the more lucrative microtransactions, pretty much the same as ever. Meanwhile FIFA has no games out on the market at the moment, with 2K Sports reportedly having the license at the moment with no games out.

People always bought FIFA for the EA brand rather than the other way around.

Much as I dislike the modern era EA, it’s hard to argue that their Football / Soccer games are duds. And EA have always been liberal about their branding so everyone knew that FIFA was an EA game.

I have an incomplete P5R playthrough languishing somewhere, and I really should admit that I'm too old to care about playing a game that's focused on teenagers dealing with common teenage interpersonal problems and growing up from them for 90+ hours.

I felt that way about the setting but once I got into it, it's possible to play and enjoy it as a variation of the card combat/collecting mechanics of Pokemon and that opens one to try Shin Megami Tensei V and maybe min maxing the other stuff in the game.

SMT is more my speed as I hate the sluggish pace of the lifesim stuff. As Atlus games go, Catherine got it right. Perfect pacing throughout.

Those numbers are for both original and remaster.

It's wild to me how Team Sonic Racing sold more than Total War Three Kingdoms

... Why? It would be quite surprising if it were the other way around.

I'm quite surprised that TW:3D sold that many copies, tbh.

I think in general Total War and its genre is relatively niche. While almost everybody is up for a bit of cartoony racing.

On other hand TW Warhammer III sold surprisingly well to me. I would have expected it to be much more niche...

There’s no fucking way they would have spent so much money on three WH titles and a fuckton of DLC to make an absolutely colossal RTS game if it was niche. Total War Warhammer single handedly saved WH Fantasy with how well it sold.

I tbink it's easy to underestimate this - everyone seems surprised when I tell them Mario Kart 8 is the 5th best selling game of all time.

Well it's been continuously sold for over a decade now, and bundled with the Switch.

Famitsu (a Japanese magazine) has top ten sales of console games in Japan every week. Until the Switch 2 launch, Mario Kart 8 was there nearly every week.

It's bundled due to the success of the game and not the other way around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44338584

What's the list?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...

Interesting that most of the best selling games aren't sequels.

It’s more interesting to me that so many are.

It’s rare for any product to have more success in later invocations than the first edition, that is where the narrative is fresh and strong- and even in the event sequels are stronger, they tend to increase sales of the first season/movie/etc; because people want the whole experience.

Aren't sequels always touted as safe bets?

Yeah but only because there will be a reactivation of x% of people.

I think the margin is usually 70%~ but depends a lot I guess.

You can safely bet that >50% of people who enjoyed seeing/playing the first of something would be interested in the second.

Video games I feel like reverse this general trend, though. Unless they have a major story component (and sometimes even if they do) many games get iteratively 'better' (better for the purposes of making sales if not of making original fans happy) for various reasons: improvements to the core game loop, polish that makes the game more appealing to new audiences, and most importantly graphics.

Story-based content is what struggles with sequels because it's really hard to both capture the feeling of the original sufficiently to satisfy existing fans while also telling a new story that's interesting in its own right. Being derivative without being too derivative.

At least for a while, technology got consistently better at a high rate for video games. Today I'm not so sure.

I remember in the 80s/90s when it seemed every movie sequel sucked. Just cashed in, and not really planned for from the beginning.

I don't think it's ever really been true that video game sequels sucked. Maybe Zelda 2 and to a lesser extent Mario 2 - but game developers seem to break new ground on sequels a lot. In fact I think sequels have been better than originals more often than not throughout game history.

For one thing it may just be more common for the first to not reach its full audience.

But my experience as a game developer is also that, when you start out making a new game, you probably kinda suck at making that game. Games sometimes suck for most of their development until they suddenly get good near the end.

And by the end, you get really good at making that specific game. A lot of game design has to come together to enlighten further game design decisions, and you really come to know what's fun by the end of it. Not to mention the technology you build for it!

A lot of game development is trying to find an idea that hits. When developing a new game, there are a lot of unknowns, budgets are tight, a lot of compromises are made, and often there are plenty of rough edges.

A sequel allows the same team to build on the shoulders of the first game, keeping what worked, adding features that players missed and refining those that didn’t work. It’s seen as a safer investment, with an existing fan base to leverage, and so this often leads to larger development and marketing budgets with a focus on growth.

I’m shocked Overwatch is so high. Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard seem to barely give it any attention and basically killed off its pro scene.

A pro scene is absolutely not a sign of a popular game. Oftentimes it's the reverse. There are so many strange externalities with a healthy pro scene that can positively destroy your general appeal. Leaving you with perhaps 10,000 really insane players, and no community outside of that.

I’ve not gathered any data to prove it, but I’ve long held a hunch that there’s something of an inverse correlation between multiplayer games’ popularity among highly competitive players and the masses.

Most people don’t want to spend large amounts of time “getting good” and don’t enjoy getting matched up against players that absolutely destroy them, but instead prefer more casual games against other players with middling skills. The thing is though, even if highly competitive games include an unranked queue intended for casuals, it ends up being filled with smurfs[0] and the like looking to smash lower skilled players, which drains the fun from the game for those players. Thinking about it that way, it’d make perfect sense if the most popular PvP games would be those that are shunned by the highly competitive - a lack of “pro” players might be considered a feature rather than a bug.

[0]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17209/where-does...

An unranked queue is often just like "well, we didn't do any game design for you on meta-progression".

Normal players would like to participate in the progression systems you design! Having a ranked queue that is uninviting to normal players due to skill, and an unranked queue that is uninviting to everyone due to progression design, but less uninviting to normal players than the ranked queue, is a pretty suboptimal result.

It's lately become a lot more popular to just secretly (or at least stealthily) put people in with bots. Marvel Snap was really successful at emulating opponents at low ranks and gradually increasing real opponent density the higher you are. Battle Royale games with 100 players per game can easily add a bunch of bots so you aren't at the bottom and can even win. I noticed Mario Kart World also has bots in most knockout matches (and I highly appreciate that it is transparent about this fact.)

There's also a ton of multi sale per person in overwatch. Especially before role queue existed, it was easier to just spend 10 bucks on a new account to learn a hero than to suffer ELO hell while doing it. People are so toxic in competitive shooters, and playing at the ELO of your best heroes while on a hero you don't even know the abilities of is very very unpleasant. I struggle to think of a person I played with that didn't have multiple accounts, some with as many as 5-10.

This is to say nothing of the rampant cheating in the game, which if a person ever gets banned for, there is nothing stopping them from just spending 10$ on a replacement account.

Wii Sports enjoyed a similar status, as it was also bundled with a console. I don't think console bundles are necessarily a fair way to count video game sales.

Mario Kart was not originally bundled with the Switch and the Switch has never been exclusively bundled with Mario Kart. You've always been able to buy a Switch by itself or bundled with other games - Mario Kart was not even the first bundle. It was like the 8th or something - two years after release, and has been re-issued every Black Friday since, but there have been numerous other bundles since as well.

RTSs aren’t popular anymore. Took me by surprise too.

PC games are relatively niche compared to console gaming for one. And RTSes tend to be heavily PC biased from the control schemes. Although these days you should be able to keyboard and mouse to a console due to being USB or Bluetooth connected anyway, using it on a couch without a desk would be awkward.

Team Sonic Racing is also available on iOS and android stores while Total War Three Kingdoms is PC only. The price must also be widely different, so the sales numbers are complex to compare.

Critters doing zoomies will always be popular as a game concept.

Surprised Like A Dragon sales are lower than others. Been gaming since a kid in the 90s, and it easily ranked in my top 10. It's an instant classic.

That whole series is pretty niche in the grand scale of things. Still does decently for a game that releases a sequel every year or two.

The series is niche but like a dragon is way different than the rest of the series. The fact it's a turn based jrpg alone would make one think it'd be more appealing but guess that it gets glossed over because of assumptions people might have due to the style of the rest of the series

I think the west has been sleeping on the series a bit. Infinite Wealth (although arguably a weaker entry) seems to be selling better, plausibly an effect Like A Dragon being a bit of a sleeper hit that managed to penetrate the western markets a bit.

Was probably strategically smart to reboot the series a bit with Kasuga. Makes it a bit more approachable.

Speaking personally as a JRPG fanatic, I've taken a look at the series a bunch of times on Steam, and there are so many obstacles to getting into it:

- where do I start? There's a dozen titles and no clear entry point

- supposedly the series' genre changed over time? So if you like it in one game it might be a different game in a sequel

- it looks weirdly unserious? Like much of the advertising focuses on doing bizarre side activities rather than any actual plot-driven message

- all this on top of having a very non-traditional environment for an RPG which already is a bit of a hurdle in messaging what the game will be like

It's just very unclear from the outside how to get started with this series, and what I'll get if I do pick one to try.

I think your read is right on the money. There is an overall plot to the games, but the reason to play is in all of the ridiculous side quests, which are decidedly not serious: "Help this naked guy who forgot his clothes", "Help this guy make baby formula", "Stop the roomba gone rogue", etc

The games are a mashup of genres, but it is only the latest one which leans so heavily into the RPG aspects. Prior installments are more "fist fight dudes" core gameplay.

Just speaking of genres and starting points: if you're looking at the series from the perspective of wanting a JRPG (and here I'm assuming you mean that you want something turn-based), then you'd want to start with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which is the first turn-based game in the series and one that introduces a new protagonist. The sequel, Infinite Wealth, is the same style of game.

Pretty much any other Yakuza game you're going to see will be more action-focused and have real-time battles, but still with RPG elements. Yakuza 0 is a commonly-suggested starting point for the action-based entries or the series as a whole; it's a prequel but one that still works well as a place to start.

Like a dragon is different than the rest of the series. It's turn based, focused on Ichiban, and it's meant to be ridiculous.

The main character essentially hallucinates that he's a character in dragon quest and the bad guys you encounter at first look normal but transform into "sujimon"/monsters during encounters.

The core gameplay is really fun, the writing is top notch (first like a dragon > infinite wealth tho), character classes/"jobs" picked out at an unemployment center are fun/funny, your "mage" is a homeless guy who summons pigeons to attack and uses a bottle of alcohol which he spews into a lighter to cast flames, and the mini games are just there if you want to play them and many are fun.

It's always on GamePass as well, I'm not sure if this counts as a sale in these figures. Although I don't think Infinite Wealth was though so not sure.

They renamed it from Yakuza, so it lost name recognition, not surprisingly.

Isn't it the other way around, woth "like a dragon" being the actual japanese name of those games ?

You’re right but it was called Yakuza in the west for many years. I don’t know if they made the right decision or not renaming it but it is interesting to consider if it made an impact in one way or another on sales.

I have enjoyed a couple in the series, but they are a bit hard to recommend. All of the story lines are anime-ridiculous, have a mixture of fun and grindy minigames (the business development loses its luster pretty quickly), and a lot of trapsing around the map doing fetch quests for the lost soul du jour.

If you want a great story, it is weak. Looking for a great tactics game, it is weak. The combination of gameplay styles is a ridiculous ride, but I can see how the genre mashup has limited appeal.

The fantasy being sold (playing as a ragtag crew of 45yo, relatively normal, down-on-their-luck men) probably doesn’t help either.

That's part of what makes it hilarious and charming.

Off topic: how can anyone use that website. The ads are pure aids.

Everyone except you is using adblock.

I do use adblock on desktop but never got round to it on mobile.

But, either way, the average user likely isn't using an adblocker; how have we got to this stage where a website is more ads than content?

Adguard DNS works amazing and the only way these sites are usable for me.

update your vernacular and your ad blocker

We're not doing this social nannying any more, kiddo.

ok dad

A reminder that Apple’s Preview app has Redact functionality specifically for this use case: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/preview/prvw11580/mac

Why would Sega not reveal sales number for each game?

I would've imagined these numbers to be much more than they are.

Yup. This is surprising to me too. These are numbers of a relatively small IT/financial firm. I guess all the hundreds of millions of dollars in gaming are taken by a small % of companies like Rockstar or the big mobile games.

Are you misreading the chart? They're not in dollars, they're in units. On slide 28 it mentions they sold 24 million units last year. Multiply by $30-60 to get actual revenue, and it's far in excess of "a relatively small IT/financial firm".

That makes much more sense, thank you. I just looked at the table on the linked page and not the *.pdf of the deck itself.

thank you that makes sense

SEGA earns $2-3 billion in revenue every year.

Keep in mind a lot of that is from Pachinko, see articles like this: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56271/sega-made-1-billion-pac...

To see WH3 sell less than Three Kingdoms was a surprise to me.

Three Kingdoms likely did very strongly in Chinese market. Where as Warhammer is much more western brand. And well if some are happy enough with 1 or 2, and don't need to expand from there that also cuts sales.

I also recall Warhammer 3 having somewhat mixed reviews at launch owing to bugs and/or missing features relative to the previous entry. As you say, if you are already happy with what was available in Warhammer 2, why buy the sequel which is going to have its own DLC treadmill?

persona 5 royal doing 7.25mil and sega still acting like it's some niche anime side hustle. meanwhile they keep pushing sonic into every genre except tax software

We do have a Persona 5 dungeon crawler, a Persona 5 rhythm game, a Persona 5 hack-and-slash game, a Persona 5 tactics game and a Persona 5 mobile game, as well as a Persona 5 TV anime and Persona 5 manga.

But still no persona 6 ;(

It's their model working as expected. The hand-picked team lavishly designs the main games, never rushing their design. Persona 5 released in 2016, when it was meant to only release on the PS3. Once Persona 6 is out, other work-for-hire studios can work on spin-offs to make the big money.

Metaphor is a fantastic detour until then though.

It's hard for me to picture how P6 could really be a step forward.

I played P4G long ago on my PS Vita, bought P5R on Steam a while back and I'm most of the way through it on my Steam Deck right now.

I love the story and the art for P5R but the game is a bit weak as a game, mainly in the way that other turn-based games (a genre I like) tend to be weak. Except for one battle, status effects mostly don't matter (just wait a few turns and they expire) Games with mechanics that don't matter are just so widespread: I think of Fire Emblem games where the weapon triangle doesn't matter because (i) it is so easy to overlevel characters, and (ii) if your characters is overleveled the weapon triangle doesn't matter.

P5R is a crazy long game that doesn't make you make any choices about which social attributes you develop or which characters you befriend, new game plus is unimaginable because the game is so long so you feel you have to do everything which makes the game longer. On top of it the game sets deadlines for you to clear various dungeons which are never challenging to hit.

... and it's not that it is a bad game relative to other games, it's one of the best, but playing through makes think that people need to make something really different in the area of turn-based games mashed up with visual novels such as shorter games that you have to play through to experience everything or games where every mechanic is meaningful. Back in the PS Vita era there were many games where I would really enjoy the NG+ such as Akiba's Trip 2 in which playthoughs got faster and faster as you got stronger or the Neptunia games which had first rate voice acting in two languages and NG+ meant you could enjoy both.

Not gonna lie, SonicTax has a nice ring to it.

get your refund FAST

comes with coupons for chili dogs

And... we've come full circle, back to the 90s.

100m

Tell me you don't want this guy working for you, to maximize your return...

https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx/5sc6a32l10000

Thank you for not lying.

Sega Sammy's content business is only about a third of their total revenue, and that's for all games, anime, licensing deals (LEGO etc.)

Persona 5 Royal is for all intent and purpose, a side hustle.

https://www.segasammy.co.jp/cms/wp-content/uploads/pdf/en/ir...

>Revenue

Profit, profit, profit. It was a standalone full-price expansion of an existing game. They made stupid money on that release.

I hear you, but that's really not where their heart is:

https://sccgmanagement.com/sccg-news/2025/5/15/sega-sammy-se...

> Sega Sammy’s new gaming division, which started in mid-2024, became a standout performer. This part of the business includes the US-focused slot machine company Sega Sammy Creation investments in online gaming, and a 45% stake in Paradise City, an integrated resort in South Korea. The division brought in ¥5.4 billion ($36.4 million) in sales and turned a profit, with an EBITDA of ¥1 billion ($6.7 million).

Why make slot machine-like gacha games when you can make and operate actual slot machines?

If they sold 7 million units at $50 each, of a game that had already been profitable in its original form, then their take-home has to be all of 2% for profit to equal that EBITDA. I'm unconvinced it's as small beans as you're making it out to be.

Don’t give them any ideas… https://taxheaven3000.com/

I refuse to believe that's a real thing. Seems like something you'd see in a Paul Verhoeven movie.

I’d love to see Sonic as CPA fighting Dr. Robotnik at the IRS!

Tails would be a clerk…

That's good. Looking forward to Persona 6, maybe on the PlayStation 6 or 7.

Only somewhat related, but a very cool link:

> These retro SEGA games are now free on Android (and iOS) until they disappear forever

https://www.androidauthority.com/sega-retro-games-android-fr...

Oooooh, Crazy Taxi has the original music. Other ports didn't/couldn't license it.

One of the best game soundtracks ever, many fond memories of it playing hours upon hours on the Dreamcast.

> End of Service: These games will be discontinued and removed

Depressing how ephemeral and consumable everything is

However this 'End of Service' means they are stopping serving ads to the game, removing online services, and allowing them to be played offline forever.

This is a much better outcome than most games or software that is discontinued.

Indeed, but they will also stop selling or distributing them, meaning they will only be available via pirates/archivists (which are endlessly harassed by these companies).

These games will never stop being sold, they are too much of a reliable income stream. They will be discontinued in this form, and then rereleased in some new retro games pack or 'remastered' version or such like. It has happened several times before now and it will continue forever.

Don't know about some of the other titles, but Sega absolutely ruined Sonic CD classic. 1.0 shipped as a svelt ~20 MB game developed by the folks behind Sonic Mania. It was great[1]. At some point, Sega decided it needed to go free to play, so they added ads and tons of bloat to the game[2]. It now sits at ~200 MB with in app purchases to disable the ads (which don't seem to work for some people). A real shame.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/retro-rings-sonic-cd-hits-i...

[2] https://powerupgaming.co.uk/2016/10/27/sonic-cd-goes-free-to...

Edit: Looks like the "end of life" version (4.0?) disables the ads but keeps the bloat which is better than I hoped for.

Sega in 2025? I thought they disappeared decades ago.

Video game consumers have always baffled me and this data just adds to it.

Who are the 7 million people going out to buy the 20th Persona game? What are you actually hoping to get from it that isn't just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before?

I have friends genuinely excited to go buy Mario Cart for the 17th time this year... Once you've made two objects move along an enclosed route at differing speeds and slapped Nintendo marketing on top hasn't the game play evolved as much as possible?

Could the money not be better spent coming up with new and interesting concepts rather than copy pasting the same stuff out every 12-18 months?

For many people, the 17th Mario Kart is the first one they buy. New people are made every day, and they won’t pay today’s prices for the first SNES version of Mario Kart

I think this is the correct answer, and also applies to other media: The 20th Star Wars or Disney reboot isn't for you - it's for your grandchildren.

Or we haven't played every game in the series. Like how most iPhone generations "are the same", but most people don't buy every year.

I last played Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii and enjoyed it. That's 17 years ago. I'll probably buy one of the newer versions at some point. And it will be very different from the game I played.

There a lots of gamers. Games like Baldur's Gate & Expedition 33, which satisfies your criteria, far surpassed those numbers already.

I know people who rewatch the same TV series every year and go to the same vacation every year.

Fear of change is deep.

Fear of change, or even just isles of stability, to help recuperate and reorient yourself whilst navigating the stormy seas of life.

Myself, I'm quite open to new forms of entertainment, as well as those previously unknown to me. Even within my favorite genres, I'm more than happy to explore - but I'm still gonna rewatch at least one Star Trek show each year.

It doesn't matter that I've seen most of those show 6-10 times each over the course of my life; it doesn't matter that I've watched some specific episodes 20+ times already. What matters to me is, each time I see those characters and those locations, it feels like coming home.

(And more so than actually coming home.)

People anchor to different things like this, not just TV shows. Sometimes it's a real place (or an event in that place - e.g. vacation), sometimes it's a club, sometimes it's a video game or an outdoor hobby.

Is this really limited to video games?

People are excited to buy new cloths, even though they're "just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before".

They love to try out the new hyped-up food stand, even though the hotdog will be just a slight variance on all the hotdogs they had before.

Clothes wear out though. I buy the same two maroon and gray button up shirts once a year because usually the ones I bought a few years ago have holes in them by then.

Video games don't wear out, you can still play the same software you bought in 2003 today.

Why do you assume that the millions of people who buy the new Persona or Mario Kart game are the same ones that bought the old one? It's very likely that they're fresh 12-20 somethings that were younger or otherwise just missed the old ones.

Not to mention, for Perosna in particular, each Perosna game tells a whole new story, so buying the fifth one is like going to see the fifth movie in a franchise: you know you like the style, and you want to experience a new story in this style. It's also not even a very long series - compare to Final Fantasy, for example, which will soon get its 17th main game (probably more like 25th or something if you included spinoffs).

> Video games don't wear out, you can still play the same software you bought in 2003 today.

The way you perceive them does, at least did back in 2023 (or 2013) and earlier.

You pick up, say, original Half Life or something from that time; story-wise it's the same game you remember, but in terms of experience, is nigh-unplayable in its original form now, because you already experienced how decades of progress in videogames look like. Not just in terms of graphics, though that is a big part, but also in terms of UI! Properly mapped controls and GUI behaviors are alone worth looking up/waiting for a remake. And/or, the Nth installment of a game in the same universe.

I often play games from the 90s from before I learned to read. IMO often they're better than modern games including their own remakes.

Every good game has odd control schemes, that doesn't mean it's worn out.

> you already experienced how decades of progress in videogames look like

IMO the quality of games has gone greatly downhill, and when I pick up something old like Doom 3, Half Life 2, or Portal, I am staggered by how good they are in comparison to most of the unity based slop which currently passes for games.

You know, humans pick up hobbies like cycling or running which they do consistently for years, listen to specific music genres or even electronic music which is mostly just a beat, hang up a painting they like in the living room and look at it for years and years, go out to their favorite place to eat consistently or cook the same passed down family recipe, and in so many other aspects avoid sudden changes, and you're surprised that for video games we enjoy the same formula repeatedly?

If you walked in to my living room and saw 17 almost identical paintings where maybe one is styled to look like papercraft, one has a little dinosaur, one has a racoon tail ect you'd rightly think i was a bit mad even before i announced i'd paid $80 for each one.

Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.

Why are you so judgmental of what kinds of paintings people hang on their walls? Just hang the paintings on your walls that you like and leave everybody else alone.

Likening a game to a painting is just a false premise. Games are a unique medium that can in themselves hold lots of different things which inherently makes them hard to compare wholesale to other mediums. They can be similar to Chess in the sense of requiring strategy or a physical sport in that they can be almost entirely composed of the skill expression of the players. They can even hold paintings or novels in their entirety, or do something entirely unique that just can't be done in other mediums (my favorite example of that is Outer Wilds).

Actually, I would think the artist is mad for selling those paintings so cheap. Paintings usually command a much higher price tag.

Then I’d compliment your ability to create a flowing theme throughout the house.

The problem with your analogy here is that art for the home (or anywhere outside a museum or gallery) is generally bought to compliment the overall aesthetics of the building, rather than to be enjoyed in isolation.

> Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.

That’s called “eclectic”, which is basically an artsy way of saying “mismatched”. Some people dig that style. Personally I don’t.

Are you also surprised by popularity of sitcoms like Friends or HIMYM, or reality shows? They're even more repetitive rehashes of the same mundane thing, both episode to episode and within the genre.

Who are the millions of people who watch, for the 20th time in their life, how Character A does something unrealistically stupid, ends up in an awkward situation, and then spend the rest of the episode being continuously teased over it by other characters, because they're all written to be slightly stupid and low-key assholes.

This is not to criticize sitcoms and reality shows (and people watching them) here, but rather to point out that the same phenomenon you described also manifests with vastly more popular forms of entertainment, so there must be something to enjoying the experience beyond sheer originality.

I was going to make a point here about it being ok to occasionally churn out some uncomplicated slop because it helps fund more interesting projects, that was until i looked up the maker of Friends and found NBC pretty much only make that kind of stuff.

NBC and Nintendo, no evolution or original thought. Just copy paste it to the masses because its all the seem to want anyway based on this thread.

Maybe im wrong for demanding more....

You’re not willing to pay for more though. You thought that the only way “good” things were funded was by “bad” things which people enjoy subsidising you.

Things can be challenging, easy, predictable, and trite and still be good. Garfield/Tetris/KFC is fine. There's not shame in enjoying it, and there's certainly no shame in working on it (or selling it).

Evolution and original stuff are amazing and we should want them to exist. To be disappointed because we also have stuff that isn't like that is to turn a blind eye to what makes up a lot of our life.

You’re not wrong for wanting it. But you are wrong for expecting that every studio should only ever release completely original content.

The reality is that there is room for studios to release original content AND sequels.

For every Star Wars and Marvel rehash there is a Big Hero 6, Elementals, and Zootopia.

And for every Nintendo there are a dozen indie games studios releasing creative new games.

The key to avoiding rehashes is literally just to avoid them. ;)

Tell us what you think about professional football next

The British one? Bores me to tears

The American version? Same but with more advertisements for pharmaceuticals.

I think that's more an issue with the specific rules/players/fans though, I've not had a problem watching multiple matches of other sports in a day.

You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant? Why bother with sports matches? Why buy a new car? New mobile? New computer? New TV? Why install a new version of an OS or software?

It's because they change: They tell new stories. They look better. They play better. They introduce completely new mechanics.

Persona: we're up to 5 in 25 years (almost 30 now!), during which time we've seen a massive increase in compute on consoles. Having a new game every 5 years seems very reasonable.

Not to mention the entirely of art, music, literature. The concept of stories in general.

It’s such an absurdly bad take they can’t be serious.

Sadly I suspect they are. There’s an entire culture of denigrating anything fun by absurdly reducing it to its basic components. I’ve seen a lot of people denigrate football by calling it “kickball” and “just 20 men running around chasing a ball on a field.” I guess we could say our job is just hitting a keyboard thousands of times a day, no idea how anyone would enjoy that! /sarcasm

Sorry but I think your analogy is just wrong.

In football anybody in the world who has legs and can walk can perform the main goal of football which is to get a ball into a very large net. It doesnt take any skill to perform the feat whatsoever. The skill only comes with who you choose to play against. From that angle, it is just 20 people chasing a ball around, it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

With programming, not everybody with fingers can achieve the end goal which is to write working software. It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

The difference between the two is that football, and sport in general, creates enjoyment by intense moments of tension and excitement in a small space of time. Programming is an intellectual activity, where its payoff is in solving mathematical and logical puzzles to achieve a goal. Its not far fetched to see that people who get enjoyment from one type thing might not enjoy the other.

Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

That seems like an unfair comparison. It doesn't take years of learning to write the "kick a ball into a net" of programming; most everybody writes hello world on their first day. Programming and sports both have vastly different difficulties depending on whether you're approaching it as an amateur or a professional.

> it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

The people denigrating football are referring to the Premier League, La Liga, etc. It’s nothing to do with skill and everything to do with snobbery.

> It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

You’re starting to sound like those people.

> Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

I didn’t say you did, all I said was that it’s a sad cultural behaviour that I’ve seen to denigrate things other people enjoy.

I don’t even watch football that much, I picked it because of its popularity.

At some point though, kind of like bad movie sequels, you start to think that Corporate has run out of ideas.

Of course someone there is looking at the balance sheet and noticing that recycling is actually profitable so who can blame them if we want to keep repurchasing the shinier version of the thing we liked before?

Then I suppose we have ourselves to blame — or not.

I suspect the OP though is bemoaning the lack of new, original ideas that this kind of commerce workflow eschews. (Myself, I'm not into first person shooters and so essentially walked away from mainstream gaming decades ago.)

> You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant?

> It's because they change

That's not true at all. I don't return to the same great restaurant because it's new and different. If I wanted that, I'd look for a different restaurant.

I go back to the same great restaurant because I'm hungry again.

And realistically the vast majority of Persona fans, certainly in the West, haven't played anything before Persona 3. By the numbers there might be an absolute majority that have just played 5, since it was such a jump in popularity and mainstream success.

Wait till you hear how many chess games I've played!

That's fine, no one is stopping the development of new board games to re-releases chess every six months with maybe one new piece or higher definition.

We all get that you are not somebody who likes sequels/remakes etc for releasing similar and/or repetitive content. But some people really do, and this whole thread and the sales numbers it is based on are kind of evident of that.

Why do you have such a problem with other people enjoying that type of content?

Same could be said about movies, tv-shows and books. Same plots over and over again.

Religion is really the worst offender. Same service with same text time after time, year after year. Like they do not even take effort to mix it up every couple years or rewrite it...

I really like if they would do shotgun Jesus riding a t-Rex that instead of being crucified is immersed in giant crucible showing thumbs up as he is consumed by molten hot metal because he knows he will be back.

Because games get better and gameplay (i.e. mechanics) get changed.

Play Persona 5 Royal, then Persona 1. Tell us it's the same game and everybody would think you are crazy. Hell, even Persona 5 Royal is way better than Persona 5 in a lot of ways...

Maybe you are satisfied by only trying out completely new things—if they even exist—but most people don't.

Sometimes, we just don’t “get” the appeal of something. For me, one of those things is fishing.

For someone else, it might be reading Hacker News.

For you, it’s video games.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with differences of opinion, even to the point of bewilderment, but it doesn’t feel productive to question people’s interests and reduce them to, frankly, disingenuous levels of oversimplification.

I think one of the more beautiful parts of the internet is how we can be connected and talk about our differences and understand each other better. But it does not seem like you are truly attempting to understand, instead your posts read more like “looking down one’s nose,” which isn’t fruitful or productive for anyone.

Maybe I am mistaken! If so, I’d like to encourage you to try to reach understanding of others without depicting them as “mad” or financially wasteful or simple-minded.

Well there are indeed tastes that might be harmful for society and should be questioned. Sometimes it is wrong to enjoy certain things

I can understand how people like fishing [1] but... Fishing minigames? I like Japanese games a lot but not the finishing minigames. One of the many things I found tone deaf about Horizon Worlds was that the starter world asked you to pick a game genre you like and when I picked RPG it put me in.... a fishing minigame.

[1] though my favorite time doing it was catching smelt on the docks on the back side of the barrier island at Hampton Beach with my grandparents and bringing back enough to fill the freezer

Because they're fun and slight variances can have huge impacts in terms of emergence, among other things.

Mario Kart World added some kind of extreme sports game style features which make it play quite a lot differently from older entries, and of course new content which takes advantage of that.

In some ways this is the optimal way for a video game company to innovate as they need ROI (people don't generally buy new IPs in high numbers even if they're really good and it often takes a couple of installments to build trust and sales!) so creating new gameplay out of trusted IPs is a good way of achieving that.

I could understand if the complaint was about a sports game. Most of them are released annually and are genuinely very similar to their previous versions.

However, every new Mario Kart game is genuinely distinct from its predecessor. You can show me any screenshot of any Mario Kart game, and I will immediately be able to identify what version it is.

The only series that release "every 12-18 months" are sports games and Call of Duty, and I can assure you that the overlap between that audience and the Persona one (which has five main-series entries of which barely anyone has played the first two) is extremely small.

Have you considered that you may just be very out of touch?

Why do people read books? They all arrange the same letters in a different order. Once you know the letters, you've seen all the books.

Great comment, have an upvote.

Your take on this is downvoted because that’s quite arrogant to reduce all racing games to two objects moving.

Everything in life can be much more complicated and nuanced if you put an effort in it as reality has infinite amount of details. There is a lot of value in refining successful concepts.

Also a lot of “new and interesting concepts” turn out not to be that useful or that interesting like not that many people listening to experimental music or reading novels whose writers think they are smarter than everyone else.

It's just the palate of the mass consumer who has such busy lives that they don't have the time to think about what other games can offer them.

And even if a "new and interesting concept" turns up, it's is too bothersome to learn for them. That's why once they find the fun in one thing, they tend to stick to it and be blind to others.

So many series I used to love that I wish did exactly this instead of reinventing themselves for a phantom new audience. I guess my health improved.

In your replies you've shown yourself to be a professional hater. Either you're trolling or you really just have no understanding of humans. You must be baffled by practically everyone around you if your comment is your true belief.

Surely there is at least one thing that you enjoy in your life that is fairly similar across iterations.

Imho you are (1) trying to be original on HN (going against the grain) and (2) being dismissive of people’s genuine interests in an area - gonna lead to defensive downvotes.

I agree with the responders that this is a common fallacy (good insights / learnings for us all). Eg I like following baseball but if you were to ask me about it 10 years ago I’d be pretty reductive about. I agree with the responders that there’s beauty in the seemingly little things at first that build. That said not all of us take the time to appreciate certain areas of beauty because there’s a lot of beauty out there. And that’s ok but nature does seem to indicate repetition and variation are fine.

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