As the week of never ending fiscal reports continues, Sega Sammy has just released their earnings for the year ended March 31. Overall the holdings company posted net income of 20.3 billion yen (about $219 million) compared to a loss of 22.9 billion yen during the previous year. Sales, however, were down more than 10% to 384.7 billion yen.
Looking specifically at the consumer division, which houses the video games business, net sales in the segment declined 7.5% to 121.8 billion yen, but the video games division did post an operating income of 6.3 billion yen (about $68 million) compared with last year's operating loss of 941 million yen.
Sega Sammy explained, "While domestic sales were mostly firm thanks to streamlining the development by narrowing down the titles, in the overseas markets, sales of new titles remained slow as affected by the adverse market condition, and also, the launch of some titles was postponed to the next fiscal year. As a result, the Group sold 10,550 thousand video game copies in the U.S., 12,380 thousand copies in Europe and 3,820 thousand copies in Japan and other regions, for a total of 26,750 thousand copies. The Group also decided to close its North American subsidiary specializing in development, Secret Level, Inc., in view of the changing business environment in overseas game software markets."
The Secret Level closure was soon followed by an entire reorganization, which saw Sega of America switch its focus entirely to digital.
Big drivers for Sega during the year included Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (6.53 million sold across the U.S. and Europe), Aliens vs. Predator (1.69 million in U.S. and Europe), Bayonetta (1.35 million worldwide), Sonic and Sega All-Star Racing (1.07 million in U.S. and Europe), Phantasy Star Portable 2 (600K in Japan) and Ryu ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu w o Tsugumono (560K in Japan).
