Ubisoft and Capcom may have outsold Sega, but guess who had the better quarter

The Q3 (October 1 – December 3, 2013) financial results from games companies are coming in, and they are honestly quite surprising.

In the past quarter, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 4 and Just Dance sold 10 and 6 million copies respectively. These are impressive numbers, but Ubi still only saw $726 million in sales, which is a 35.2% decrease compared to 2012’s Q3. To make matters worse for the company, Ubisoft’s older titles charted a 21% decrease in sales, and it is reporting a year loss of $88.6 million.

Capcom, on the other hand saw a 3.5% increase in sales which hit $752 million this quarter. Unfortunately when compared to the previous year’s Q3, sales are down 13.4%, even with Monster Hunter 4 selling four million copies.

The big surprise was Sega, which was up 46.8% in sales compared to last year, raking in over $3 billion. Its profit? Sega made $465.7 million, which is a 558.4% increase from 2012. That’s insane. The real surprising factor here is that Sega’s top-selling game this quarter was Football Manager 2014, which sold 680,000 copies. That’s just over a tenth of the copies Ubisoft’s 2nd best selling game sold.

How did Sega do so much better than these other two? DLC and in-app purchases, that’s how. Sega’s Puyo Puyo Quest and Chain Chronicles reached six million and two million downloads respectively this last quarter and with the increase of users came an increase in sales.

These free-to-play games seem to be doing better for game companies than actually selling the full game, which has got me really wondering about the future of the gaming industry. I’ll be curious to see how these free-to-play games will continue to affect the market, and if more and more companies will go that route. If the money is there, I have no doubt they will.

How much can a company make off a free to play game?