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Empire results down for first half, expects strong full year

British publisher Empire has announced its interim results for the first half of 2004, showing a fall in turnover and gross profit - but the company anticipates better sales in the second half and a strong full year.

British publisher Empire has announced its interim results for the first half of 2004, showing a fall in turnover and gross profit - but the company anticipates better sales in the second half and a strong full year.

Turnover for the six month period, which ended June 30th, was UKP 12.1 million, down from UKP 18.6 million last year, while gross profit stood at UKP 6.5 million as against UKP 11.3 million in 2003.

Empire attributed this decline - which also saw pre-tax earnings falling into a loss of UKP 0.9 million from last year's UKP 2.1 million profit figure - largely to an unusually strong first half in 2003, a year which saw the company recording 62 per cent of its earnings in the first six months.

This year, the firm expects its figures to follow the more normal seasonality of the games industry, with the bulk of revenue being recorded in the second half - and Empire expects full year results for 2004 to be strong overall, thanks to a good line-up of titles for Christmas.

The second half of the year will see Empire launching Bad Boys II in the United States, following on from its European launch in the first half, along with the release of Ford Racing 3 and the firm's headline title for 2004, Flat Out.

The publisher has also announced a new deal with Japanese firm Taito which will see the 2005 launch of Taito Arcade Classics on PS2, Xbox and PC in both Europe and the USA, featuring 30 of the best Taito arcade titles from the last 20 years - including Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands and Operation Wolf.

"The group has build on its successes, tightly controlled its costs and is well placed to benefit from stronger second half sales," according to Empire CEO Ian Higgins. "The outlook for the group in 2004 is positive."

Author
Rob Fahey avatar

Rob Fahey

Contributing Editor

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.