Sega posts £17 million quarterly loss, sees sales fall

Sega has posted its quarterly financials for the period ending June 30, 2011, recording a loss of ¥2.22 billion (£17 million) compared to a profit of ¥7.03 billion (£55.4 million) in the same period last year.

Sega Sammy's group sales net sales dropped 28.5 per cent to ¥65.33 billion (£514.9 million)

The firm's game division saw sales drop 22.3 percent to ¥16.2 billion (£127.7 million).

Sega said part of the reason for the loss was due to settlement payment for patent licensing, along with a "generally weak," demand in the US and European markets which saw sluggish personal consumption.

Major titles for the overseas markets including Virtua Tennis 4 and THOR: God of Thunder, along with the major Japanese titles such as Yakuza: OF THE END were launched. Although domestic sales generally remained solid, in the overseas markets, sales of the new titles remained slow as affected by the adverse market condition. A

As a result, Sega's game group sold 700,000 video game copies in the US, 1.02 million copies in Europe and 600,000 copies in Japan and other regions, for a total of 2.33 million copies, which is below the performance level of the same period in the previous fiscal year.

In the mobile phone, smartphone and PC content business, iOS title Kingdom Conquesta was downloaded 1.3 million times, while titles for social and smartphone such as SAMURAI BLOODSHOW also launched. Meanwhile, the pay-per-use service of 777 Town remained solid.

Sega said it needs to "adapt to changing business environments," in which the market demand for "new content geared to social networking service and smartphone" is rapidly expanding.

Thanks, Edge.