Sega sees red as sales fall

Sega sales are down across the board, leading to an overall loss of 2.224 billion yen (£17.6 million) for the three months April, May and June.

During the same period last year, Sega recorded a profit of 7.036 billion yen (£55.6 million).

Why did this happen? Sales were lower and costs were higher. Sega made 28.5 per cent less this financial Q1 than the same period last year. The take for April to June 2011 was 65,331 yen (£516 million).

Costs rocketed primarily because of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which caused serious ramifications for Sega's operational functionality, as well as its pachislot and pachinko business. Arcade amusements suffered, too.

In Sega's video game business it was the "headwind-like sluggish personal consumption" of the European and US markets that meant "demand was generally weak".

During the April-June period, Sega launched Virtua Tennis 4 and film tie-in Thor in the West. In the East, Sega released Yakuza: Of the End.

Sales by title aren't mentioned, but we know that Sega managed 2.33 million sales worldwide during the three months. That broke down into 1.02 million European sales, 700,000 American sales and 600,000 Japan and other region sales.

That "is below the performance level of the same period in the previous fiscal year", Sega noted - 22.3 per cent below.

Sega did enjoy some success on iPhone, where Kingdom Conquest was downloaded 1.3 million times. Sega also mentioned curious title Samurai Bloodshow in relation to social networking services and smartphone.

"The Group needs to adapt to changing business environment in which the market demand for new content geared to social networking service (SNS) and smartphone is expanding," wrote Sega.

Sega recorded its net assets (its company worth) at ¥285.461 billion (£2.245 billion).