Kagasei Shimomura, a SEGA Ages senior producer has revealed that the overseas sales of the series have been much higher than anticipated. Sonic, Out Run, and Alex Kidd in Miracle World have received an especially large response in Europe, but Japan is another story.
Shimomura and supervisor Yosuke Okunari revealed that sales have been a bit slow and stated that there is a need to appeal to the Japanese fan base more as SEGA Ages on Switch has been selling less than half as well as the 3DS classics that were developed a few years ago.
Shimomura: Honestly speaking the Japanese sales need to be better, and I take responsibility for that. This market is becoming more and more niche, and while each series being on different platforms means there is little point in directly comparing them, the reality is that sales are less than half of the 3D Classics Collection. Because this particular project will release games over a longer period than those packaged collections, we’d like maintain a good relationship with players. For that reason we won’t quit or get pessimistic… though it may take us time to make this second phase [of games] a reality.
Okunari: We definitely need to work harder to satisfy our Japanese fan base. When I look back on it now, it took around two years to make the first 3D Classics Collection. Continuing after that, Shimomura took over the development of the second collections for us, but out of the three domestic games in the arcade series, only one was released overseas. This time around, hopefully those overseas where those 3DS collections were not released will be able to experience them fresh.