Matt Martin
09:49 (BST)
15/09/2008
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SCi suffers £99 million loss in "difficult" year
SCi Entertainment has suffered a GBP 99.1 million loss for the financial year ended June 30, compared to a loss of GBP 13.3 million in 2007.
The company announced back in February that it was to transform its business to a studio led model, and has since closed Conflict developer Pivotal Games, and canned a number of projects in development.
Gross profit for the period increased to GBP 56.1 million, compared to GBP 54.3 million the prior year.
"The 2008 results reflect a year in which we took decisive action to transform our business," commented Phil Rogers, CEO of SCi.
"We have emerged as a stronger business and over the next year we will see the results of our restructured and revitalised operation. We are focused on delivering higher quality games with our priorities clearly set on maximising the returns from our cornerstone franchises."
"The past financial year has been difficult but the action we have taken was necessary and has produced a business that is now well placed to capitalise on the opportunities that the videogames industry presents."
The group is concentrating on its key franchises – Hitman, Deus Ex, Championship Manager and Tomb Raider – with plans to begin marketing these core titles much further out from the product launch date to build awareness.
"Over the past six months the Group has cancelled a number of projects that the board considered either loss-making, unlikely to generate acceptable returns on investment or not of appropriate quality," said the company. "We have also introduced a new, tougher 'green-light' process to monitor product quality of all future projects."
SCi released 10 titles under the Eidos publishing brand for the last financial year, selling a total of 7.1 million units.
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men sold 1.4 million copies, Tomb Raider Anniversary sold 1 million units and Conflict Denied Ops 0.5 million.
Tomb Raider: Underworld is due from the publisher in November this year, with titles for the next financial year to include Just Cause 2, Battlestations Pacific, Monster Lab, Championship Manager 09 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
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