Sonic Boom Is a Sonic Bust for Sega

The blue speedster hedgehog passed his prime a long time ago, but Sonic the Hedgehog has hit a new low as sales numbers for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal have failed to even sell 500k units between them. Eurogamer reported that the two games only hit 490,000 copies sold since their releases back in November of last year. This estimate could actually be lower in reality as Sega’s report did not specify whether this was a count of how many copies were shipped versus how many copies have been sold to consumers.

Either way, this makes Sonic Boom the worst selling Sonic game in the franchise’s history. Even with the cartoon exclusively released to promote the release of the games, Sonic Boom failed to pick up any steam. Part of this may have to do with how the games hit shelves filled with bugs, one of which let the player skip most of the game. Sonic: Lost World, released back in 2013 also for Wii U and 3Ds, in comparison sold 710,000 copies in the same time. However, the very first Sonic game remains the best-seller for the hedgehog with 15 million copies.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was released for the Wii U while Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal was released for the 3DS. Neither were received well by critics, and many reiterated calls that have been going on for awhile that Sonic and his friends sit out for a bit until Sega figures out what is going wrong with their once classic character.

The star performer in the financial report was, unsurprisingly, Alien: Isolation. It leads the field in the recently announced BAFTA Games nominations with recognition in six categories, including Best Game. Overall, however, Sega Sammy saw a drop in net sales, operating income, and net income in their financials over the nine months ending in December.  Sega’s announcement last month of beginning to refocus operations towards digital and PC games could have come in anticipation of these financial struggles.