SEGA: Alpha Protocol sales were "slow"

SEGA's blamed "slow" sales of Alpha Protocol and Iron Man 2 for weak videogame income in the three months ending 30 June 2010.

The company's consumer business lost $7.4 million during April to June. Bad, but a dramatic improvement on last year's Q1 result of minus $52 million.

SEGA openly told the world earlier this month that Alpha Protocol - an espionage RPG made by Obsidian and released in May - "hasn't sold what we've expected". The upshot: no sequel. Eurogamer gave Alpha Protocol a solid and not-to-be-sniffed-at 6/10.

Not that any of this seems to be preventing Obsidian finding work; the studio is currently making Fallout: New Vegas for Bethesda and Dungeon Siege III for Square Enix.

SEGA had this to say: "In the home videogame software industry, the demand was generally weak in the US and European markets due to the headwind-like sluggish personal consumption.

"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."

For SEGA, the US was the strongest territory, where 1.68 million units were sold. Europe shifted 1.33 million units and the rest of the world (including Japan) managed only 270,000 units.

SEGA's best earner was arcades and amusements, which transformed a $12.5 million loss in Q1 2009 to a $16.2 million profit this year.

In light of the lower-than-expected consumer sales, yearly forecasts for videogame sales have been dialled down to 5 million from 6.3 million.