Namco Bandai today announced the results for the first nine months of its fiscal year ending December 31 and it's not pretty. The Japanese publisher posted a loss of 11.7 billion yen ($129 million) during the period, compared to a 9.01 billion yen ($99.6 million) profit for the same period last year.
“The Namco Bandai group generally faced an uphill battle in the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2010,” said the holdings company in a statement, “During which market conditions for the group remained severe, despite steady results achieved in sales of long-established character toys in the Toys and Hobby business and arcade game machines in the Game Contents business.”
Sales were at 282 billion yen ($3.12 billion), down roughly 10 percent from 315 billion yen ($3.48 billion) the same period a year ago. Operating income simultaneously dropped precipitously from 19.8 billion ($219 million) last year to 4.7 billion yen ($52 million), a decrease of over 75 percent.
"In the Game Contents business in particular, sales fell below projections given weak market conditions for most of major home game software titles except Tekken 6, the largest title released in the current fiscal year, leading to weak results for the segment," the company noted.
As a result of this, Namco Bandai is revising their full-year projections downward. The company expects sales of 380 billion yen ($4.2 billion) rather than 400 billion yen ($4.42 billion) and a loss of 31 billion yen ($343 million) rather than profits of 8.5 billion yen ($94 million).
