Profits climb at Sega as arcade sector continues to strengthen

Japanese publisher Sega has announced that its net profit for the nine months to December 31st rose by some 92 per cent, although the December quarter saw declining revenues and profits.

Sega reported profits of 7.66 billion Yen (â'¬57.5m) for the nine-month period, as compared with a net profit of 3.98 billion Yen in the same period last year, with the increase driven largely by strong performance of the company's arcade division.

Although Sega did not release individual figures for the December quarter alone, calculations from news agency Reuters suggest that the company's revenues in the quarter fell 8.1 per cent to 51.04 billion Yen (â'¬383 million).

According to Reuters, operating profit during the quarter was up by 3 per cent to 4.94 billion Yen (â'¬37m), but a variety of costs dragged the company's net profit down by 41.9 per cent to 1.72 billion Yen (â'¬13m).

For the full year, Sega has dropped its projections for software sales by 11 per cent, and now expects to sell 8.35 million units rather than the original forecast of 9.38 million units. The company stressed, however, that this is not due to underperformance of titles, but rather is down to the decision to push back three titles into the financial year beginning in April in order to address quality issues.