SEGA’s data analytics for mobile gaming now faster than Sonic

Everyone is familiar with SEGA Corporation’s video games for the longest time. As one of the most successful gaming companies in the world, SEGA continues to entice fans with new gaming concepts as well as evolving classic video games to cater to the growing mobile gaming community.

In fact, the mobile gaming market in the US alone is estimated to be US$20.3 billion in 2022 which China forecasted to reach US$43.4 billion by 2026. And with 5G being adopted in more countries, the mobile gaming market is only growing to expand at a much faster pace.

As such, SEGA has recognized the increasing importance of the mobile gaming business. While console games still have strong demand, many gamers today prefer to have a bit of everything. This includes playing games on their mobile devices, desktops, and consoles.

However, with so many gaming companies in the market, the competition in the industry is also high. To improve its mobile games, SEGA depends on data to continuously understand evolving gamer needs and enable business and development teams to make informed decisions. Analysts for each game title have to conduct complex analyses, spanning vast amounts of game data and external data from various sources, including social media and advertisements, to improve games.

These processes however can be rather time-consuming. Thus, SEGA has now collaborated with Qlik to become more data driven. SEGA will now streamline its mobile game business with Qlik Sense, generating faster and deeper gamer insights to better engage with mobile phone gamers.

SEGA introduced Qlik’s solutions, including Qlik Sense, to bring in multiple data sources and automate the creation of routine reports. With Qlik, analysts can independently collect, process, and analyze the required data. They are also able to incorporate data from external sources without writing complex algorithms.

Now, analysts can automatically generate 450 different reports, reducing the average analytics workload by 170 hours per game title. Qlik’s ability to integrate and standardize data frees up analysts’ time and allows them to focus on solving more complex tasks. They are also able to yield gamer insights more quickly, detect problems earlier, verify hypotheses, plan improvements, and change direction according to market trends.

According to Masaki Takeuchi, Section Manager of Business & Data Analysis Section, Business Planning Department, Game Contents & Service Business Division at SEGA, mobile gaming analysts are now free from the routine work of preparing data reports and enable them to spend more time solving complex analytical challenges.

“By extracting better insights from more data sources faster, our employees can better understand market movements and evaluate game performance from multiple perspectives. We now have a data analytics environment where we can more actively work on the next big game hit,” commented Takeuchi.

For Hiroshi Imai, Country Manager of QlikTech Japan K.K., through Qlik’s Active Intelligence vision, SEGA can benefit from real-time information that triggers immediate actions, further developing SEGA’s data-driven corporate culture for even more exciting games.

So the next time someone plays Sonic on their mobile device, Qlik should be able to process the data much faster and provide the analytics needed for SEGA to understand its customers and gamers better.

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