Losses climb to $50m for Sega's consumer business

Sega Sammy has posted a net loss of ¥2.22 billion ($28.8 million) for the three months ended June 30, with sales down 28 per cent to ¥65.33 billion ($846.9 million).

More drastically, the company's consumer games business - which includes consoles, smartphones and social network titles - recorded a loss of ¥3.85 billion ($49.9 million), compared to a loss of ¥636 million ($8.23 million) for the same period last year.

In the consumer business, sales in Japan were static while releases in the US and Europe were slow. The company sold a total of 2.3 million consoles games, in a period were it released Virtua Tennis 4, Thor: God of Thunder and Ryu ga Gotoku: Of The End.

Sales and profits were also down in the pachinko and arcade sales segments, although operating profits at Sega amusement facilities were up 257 per cent.

Sega's Sammy subsidiary announced that it plans to build a new manufacturing plant and distribution center for its pachislot and pachinko machines business, to be completed during the 2013 fiscal year.