HowlingFear wrote:Forgive me my impatience but the more answers you come up with the more questions I have.
Despite all the troubles SCE has better revenue than Sega (correct me if I'm wrong). Since you said that Sony wouldn't be able to release PS4 due to their financial loss, why Sega theoretically would have it instead ?
Also as I said Sony still can rely on PSP sales.
In its 6 years of life, PSP hasn't made much of a dent in the handheld market, and with the boom of smartphones and tablets as well as the fact that DS has always maintained a substancial and larger handheld marketshare than PSP. It doesn't make a difference.
Like I said, while SCEI may have better revenue than SEGASammy, its not doing as immpressive as it should and used to be. $435 million in annual operating profit for company worth $50 billion is pretty poor. The reason why SCEI is doing so poorly is because PS3 is only preforming better in smaller markets, it remains dismal in sales and market penetration in North America.
Since SEGASammy is doing better finicially, they are able to invest $800 million or so into a new arcade board/console. SEGA never really
invested too much into one project, in 1993 Saturn's total budget was only $635 million(that's about $1.5 billion in today's inflation.) Dreamcast's was even less at just $515 million,$800 million would be the exact same budget in today's economy.
I think its pretty clear for SEGA, that its time to leave the multiplatform business. I'm glad they aren't renewing the "SEGA Corporation" brand which will expire next year. They're not really breaking even with overseas boxed multiplatform sales, and with the US software market currently very weak and with an upcomming Nintendo console who's potentional and anticpation is fading week by week, its time for SEGA to return to hardware branding. Thankfully, EA is giving SEGA a bit of a boost with letting them license properties in Japan.
