SEGA 9 month profit down 6.6% YoY as games buoyed by Pachinko

SEGA Sammy has released its nine month financial report for the period ending December 31, 2011, revealing a shrinking videogames business but a resurgence in the sales of Pachinko machines.

Overall, the business made a profit of ¥34.4 billion (£284.7m) for the period, with sales of ¥311.7 billion (£2.58bn), a year on year increase of 0.5 per cent.

Of that total, ¥64.1 billion in net sales came from the Consumer Business arm, which includes SEGA's videogame business alongside its toy and animation sectors. That represents a shrinkage of 4.9 per cent from the same period in the year previous.

Consumer business made a net loss of ¥5,509 million across the nine months, compared to a positive income of ¥2,811 million for the year before.

Software highlights included Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, which sold 2.4 million copies on Wii alone. The title will be released on 3DS in February.

A statement accompanying the report blamed poor foreign sales for the sector's shrinkage and acknowledged the need to engage with social gaming.

"In the home video game industry, demand was generally weak in the U.S. and European markets due to the headwinds such as sluggish personal consumption," reads the summary.

"The Group needs to adapt to a changing business environment in which the market demand for new content geared toward social networking services (SNS) and smartphones is expanding."

Pachinko sales showed positive growth for SEGA Sammy, as did income from arcade operations. Arcade machine sales were down, however.