Sega stepped out of the limelight back in 2001 when it announced its decision to cede the console race to Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. While the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast all left indelible impressions on their fans, the lack of commercial success led Sega to focus their efforts on video game publishing.
But Sega’s rebellious spirit lived on, innovating through acquisitions of disparate studios and empowering the talented individuals therein to develop high-quality games. They clawed their way back from the financial setbacks of their console-making days and earned both critical and commercial acclaim, becoming Metacritic’s Top-rated Publisher of the Year in 2020. Though mostly associated with Sonic, Sega has proven itself to be more than a one-mascot pony with massive hype for multiple franchises at Tokyo Game Show.
In this article, we’re looking at Sega’s repeated successes throughout 2024, including key franchises that have made the jump onto live streaming and the steps the Japanese publisher has taken to build momentum heading into 2025.
Sonic Games Rely on Legacy, with Occasional Spikes from New Releases
Sega’s most recent game was one of its most highly anticipated, featuring The Blue Blur himself: Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic X Shadow Generations takes its cue from the earlier release Sonic Generations, with both titles reimagining stages from old Sonic games but with updated (and thankfully better controlled) gameplay. Like many other games including Star Wars Outlaws and World of Warcraft: The War Within, Sonic X Shadow Generations provided Advanced Access to Digital Deluxe Edition buyers which opened on the 22nd of October. As a result, debut week data is taken from this date.
With this caveat, Sonic X Shadows Generations generated 831K hours watched in its debut week, with a peak viewership of 30K. This is a relatively modest viewership compared to other AAA titles, and certainly small when compared to other well-known IPs. The game’s recycling of classic maps can hurt viewership, with some users not suitably incentivised to tune in just for a rehash of ‘old content’. However, the decent airtime of 42K hours suggests streamers were still interested in checking out the game – just not big-name streamers with large in-built audiences.
Still, Sega’s strategy of playing on nostalgia isn’t misguided. For starters, Sonic X Shadow Generations debuted to glowing reviews and over 1M copies sold within its first day of release. But more crucially to Sega’s overall business strategy, Sonic games have incredible long-term viewership on live-streaming platforms. Games like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle still generated 2.9M hours watched since the start of 2020 despite having been released back in 2001 (and also featuring Shadow the Hedgehog).
The only games to have beaten this viewership over the same time period are Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Frontiers with 6.1M and 5.8M hours watched, respectively. However, it’s worth noting that streams tagged Sonic the Hedgehog may refer to many, MANY Sonic games and other media, including (but not limited to) the original Sonic the Hedgehog game, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic TV series’ watch parties and so on.
So why didn’t this latest release reach the heights of Sonic Frontiers? This might come down to a perception issue: Games like Sonic X Shadow Generations feel like handheld, miniaturized titles when compared to fully 3D, open-world games like Sonic Frontiers. It’s the same reason a game like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom can’t hope to pull in the viewership of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom despite both being from the same franchise, featuring on the same console, and utilizing similar sandbox mechanics. Mega-popular streamers will automatically check out a new “mainline” game in a major franchise, but “spin-off” or “handheld” games don’t have the same allure as they’re considered inexpensive experiments or low-performance alternatives.
Sega’s String of Successes in 2024 Proves its Live Streaming Dominance
While Sonic X Shadow Generations might not be the best fit for live streaming, Sega has plenty of other IPs that have successfully made the leap AND are garnering positive sentiment from all facets of the industry. Speculators have noticed this incredible year among Sega-published games, despite coming from totally distinct franchises. Some recent entries with highly-rated scores on Metacritic include:
- Metaphor: ReFantazio (94)
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (89)
- Persona 3 Reload (87)
- Total War: Warhammer III (86)
- Football Manager 2024 (84)
- Sonic X Shadow Generations (80)
- Alien: Isolation (79)
Below we look at the live-streaming performance for Sega games in 2024, including many of these well-reviewed titles.
At the top of the heap is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the latest entry in the Ryū ga Gotoku series, which pulled in 15.2M hours watched since its release in January 2024. Although the original game was designed to appeal to fans of Japanese crime dramas, the series’ hyper-specific tone slowly won over Western players. The switch from action adventure to RPG with the series’ previous entry, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, saw an explosion in popularity that led to the franchise’s current demand. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth continues to innovate by featuring contemporary influences like VTubers and exploring alternate genres with spin-offs. With one new game released every year since the series’ inception in 2006 (except 2021), this is an exciting time to be a Like a Dragon fan.
Speaking of RPGs, Atlus’ games also have some of the biggest live-streaming viewerships among Sega’s published titles with Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor: ReFantazio generating 11.2M and 8.7M hours watched in 2024, respectively. We’ve discussed the era-defining Metaphor: ReFantazio previously, so its monumental success requires little further discussion here. Meanwhile, Persona 3 Reload continued Atlus’ trend of remastering their previous RPGs in delightfully modern ways that innovate enough to feel like more than mere recycled content.
Lastly, we have titles that many might be surprised to find are published by Sega given that they come from Western developers, including Football Manager 2024 (8.7M), Total War: Warhammer III (7.1M), and Alien: Isolation (4.5M). These franchises stand on their own merits, representing some of the best gameplay in their respective genres from established IP. Football Manager 2024 deserves special mention, however, being the best-selling entry in the series so far with 7M players.
Sega’s Bold Plans Look to Strengthen Their IP and Revive Old Series
Sega of America CEO Shuji Utsumi acknowledges the importance of Sonic, Ryū ga Gotoku, and Persona in keeping Sega relevant over the past couple of decades. But as shown above, Sega has not just survived but thrived. The SEGA SAMMY Group (which also includes arcade and pachinko machines) jumped from sales of ¥277.7B in 2020 to ¥467.8B in 2024 – a nearly ¥200B increase over 5 years!
Reinforcing this idea, Sega has kept a solid baseline of roughly 18M hours watched per quarter on live-streaming platforms, with peaks for new releases – including a massive peak of 42.8M hours watched in Q1 2024 coinciding with the release of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. While other publishers struggle to produce consistent results year-over-year as they rely on a few select franchises (even big publishers like Nintendo with Mario and Zelda), Sega’s diversity of IP and global publishers keep them consistently relevant. Sega is employing two key strategies to capitalize on its current assets.
Firstly, Sega has fully embraced transmedia approaches to its IP. The list of TV shows, films, and comics based on Sega IP are too numerous to list in full, but some examples include the mega-popular trilogy of Sonic films (with the third film to release in December this year), the much-memed Sonic TV show, the upcoming Like a Dragon TV series, and film adaptations of Shinobi and House of the Dead. And all this is even without touching on Sega’s involvement with arcade games and even virtual concerts/music with Hatsune Miku! In essence, Sega knows that by leveraging its positive reputation in gaming and iconic character designs to diversify into other entertainment avenues, it can strengthen its IP recognition.
The second strategy involves providing a diversity of play opportunities rather than going all-in on one key experience (like many live service game developers). The current form of this strategy involves Sega bringing back many of their classic titles through remakes, remasters, and (possibly) reboots. At The Game Awards 2023, Sega released a short trailer showing that much-loved games like Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, and Crazy Taxi would be receiving modern updates. This isn’t simply cashing in on recognizable IP: Sega is hoping to recapture the rebellious edge of their Dreamcast days where they emphasized technological advancements (many often considered “ahead of their time”). These include the Dreamcast’s cross-genre games and internet access (including MMO Phantasy Star Online).
With this exciting strategy moving forward, Sega’s run of successful titles has come at the perfect time: Key competitor Nintendo is having a relatively dry year leading into the Switch 2’s announcement, while Capcom relies on just 2 or 3 key franchises for live-streaming popularity. It remains to be seen if Sega can carry its momentum into next year, but events like Twitch Drops or influencer marketing collaborations could be the key to further spreading the Sega hype.
Correction: The wrong image was used for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – this has now been amended.
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