Pro Evo Soccer series has sold 69m units to date

Japanese publisher Konami saw a 9.5 per cent year-on-year drop in its net income from the first nine months of fiscal 2010.

The firm brought in ¥9615 million( $117.5 million) in profit off the back of $118,308 ($2.3 billion) in revenues. Sales declined 1.4 per cent in total, although when looking purely at Konami's digital entertainment category the revenue dip was 2.5 per cent.

Computer and video games specifically provided ¥46.7 billion ($575 million) of the company's total sales for April to December 2010.

Konami looked to the latest versions of Metal Gear and Pro Evolution Soccer (aka Winning Eleven) as being the major providers here, claiming sales had "progressed favourably."

While specific figures for the latest releases were not given, the publisher did note that the total worldwide sales for the entire PES series had reached 68.8 million units.

Domestically, "romance-themed communication game series LOVEPLUS" enjoyed record first week sales for its latest iteration.

The firm observed that "Although the Japanese economy showed signs of recovery from the recession, a difficult business climate persisted in the environment surrounding the Konami Corporation and its subsidiaries, as uncertainty over the future due to factors such as the impact of the appreciation of the yen and deflation."

Its forecasts for the entirety of fiscal 2010 were relatively unchanged, predicting net income of $165 million and revenues of $3.5 billion.

During 2011, "we will continue to focus on the expanding overseas video game software market. We plan to launch the latest title of the Winning Eleven series Winning Eleven 3DSoccer for a new platform Nintendo 3DS and intend to develop various titles," as well as pushing further into the social game market.