Sega says its new releases, especially Sonic Rumble, have performed below expectations

Sega says its recent releases haven’t performed as well as expected, citing Sonic Rumble in particular.

In its latest Q3 financial report covering the period from October 2025 to December 2025, parent company Sega Sammy says new game releases during this period – both full-price games and free-to-play – didn’t meet sales expectations, and added that the sales of older games weren’t as strong as hoped either.

In the section of its report covering the consumer entertainment sector, Sega noted that in terms of full-price games, “both new titles and repeat sales performed below expectations”.

As for free-to-play titles, “two new titles underperformed the expectations” according to Sega, while “existing titles performed as expected”.

Sega also noted that the performance of Rovio – the Angry Birds mobile studio it acquired in 2023 – had also been sluggish for the period.

While Sega didn’t specify exactly which full-price games had performed below expectations, it did note that the only two full-price games released during its Q3 financial period were Football Manager 26 and the Switch 2 version of Persona 3 Reload.

The company didn’t explicitly name Football Manager 26 as having underperformed, but did note that it had “released a series of updates to address post-launch bugs, etc and improved the gameplay environment”, and planned to “continue to enhance the quality and fan satisfaction through ongoing dialogue with the user community”.

In terms of its free-to-play releases, Sega did specifically cite Sonic Rumble as a game that didn’t perform as well as it hoped, saying “various KPIs, particularly customer acquisition, fell short of expectations”, and that it plans to “strengthen operations through updates and other measures”.

Later in its report, as it listed its challenges and actions for the future, Sega said there was “high volatility in sales” and “uncertainty in investment recovery”, again citing “stagnant growth in sales of major full game titles”, “underperformance of the new F2P title Sonic Rumble” and “quality issues with some titles”.

Sega hopes its latest free-to-play release Sega Football Club Champions will do better, however. Although its January 22 release means its figures aren’t covered in the financial report, the company did at least note that it had “launched the service globally” and that it was “off to a good start”.