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Finance

SEGA Sammy posts financial improvement

Fri 04 Feb 2011 8:29am GMT / 3:29am EST / 12:29am PST
Finance Publishing

Revenues and profits both rise, although company notes "adverse market conditions" in the West

SEGA Sammy Holdings has reported its financial results for the nine months ending December 31, 2010, with headline growth on both revenue and profit numbers.

The overall corporation saw sales rise by 8.7 per cent to ¥310 billion ($3.8 billion), while profit was up significantly, by 118.2 per cent to ¥63.0 billion ($772 million).

The majority of the income came from the pachinko and amusement segments of the business, with its videogame publishing arm bringing in ¥67.4 billion ($826 million) in revenues and ¥2.8 billion ($34.3 million) profit.

Titles released in the third quarter included Sonic Colors, Vanquish and Football Manager 2011 in the Western markets, while Shining Hearts was launched in Japan - but the company noted that it still found the videogames environment a challenge.

"In the overseas markets, sales of the new titles remained slow as affected by the adverse market condition, although sales remained solid in the Japanese market," read a statement.

In total just shy of 6 million game units were sold in Europe, compared to 5.8 million in the US and 1.9 million in Japan and other regions, making 13.6 million in total.

For the full year the company is forecasting overall revenues of ¥410 billion ($5.0 billion), which would be up 6.6 per cent over the previous year; and ¥37.5 billion ($460 million) in net income, representing growth of 77 per cent. Earnings per share have been estimated at ¥147.44 ($1.81).

The company's share price closed today up 1 per cent at ¥1744 ($21.38).

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5 Comments

Shaun Farol Studying Computer Information Systems, California Polytechnic State University

40 12 0.3

That is one understatement. Oh Japan you are always so polite even in your stockholder reports.

Well I guess "adverse market condition" is certainly one way of descriving the precarious economy in the west right now.

Posted:5 years ago

Tommy Thompson Studying Artificial Intelligence (PhD), University of Strathclyde

110 0 0.0

While that statement may refer to the economy, it could also be loosely translated as "our poor offerings are not selling in the west". It sounds awfully similar to the tripe that Capcom pushed after the failure of Bionic Commando and Dark Void (both rather average games that I enjoyed nonetheless for all of the 6-8 hours they took to complete).

While I can't say anything for Football Manager or Sonic, Vanquish was a decent enough game. But therein lies the problem, it was 'decent'. Not great, decent. Furthermore, I picked it up after it was slaughtered by price cuts. Sega don't have that killer IP to grab audiences. Throwing another Sonic game at the wall doesn't really help, since the property's credibility has been damaged considerably. This is not to even mention the horrendous licensed games they've released for the likes of Marvel comics (who really should know better). Sega do have a wealth of IPs dating back to the Dreamcast and Mega Drive days (Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, Streets of Rage etc.) I'm surprised they've never attempted to re-hash these like Nintendo has (successfully) done so over the years. It's clear from the fact you can buy many of these games on Xbox/Wii/PSN/iPhone etc. that there is interest. Get it sorted.

Posted:5 years ago

Rachel Griffiths Studying Graduate Entry Medicine, University of Nottingham

12 0 0.0

@ Tommy, I agree, I think it's a problem facing a few Japanese companies, especially when they make games focused on the Western market. Square Enix is another which has suffered in the Western market recently, relying on the FF IP when even that seems to have gone considerably downhill since its glory days. Sega do seem to try and rely on Sonic, which as you say no-one is bothered about following consistently weak titles. Updates of old classics are always appreciated when they can be easily downloaded, but I would like to see a full retail title which is more than decent, but really original.

Posted:5 years ago

Alex Ayling

1 0 0.0

Great to see SEGA are back in the money again! After Sonic 06 I was so worried they might become bankrupt...still nothing compared to Nintendo, but I can stop worrying about my fave videogame production company now, I'm so glad of that!

Posted:5 years ago

Mark Nolan Editor, GameKiq

3 0 0.0

Oy. Maybe if they made games that weren't crap, they wouldn't be seeing such harsh or "adverse" conditions here in the US.

Posted:5 years ago