SEGA Sees Profits, Looks to the West

Capcom lost money in its first fiscal quarter of the year and even the juggernaut that is Nintendo failed to turn up a profit in a tough climate, with a strong Yen and with falling sales of hardware. But SEGA managed to sell a profit of 7 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 80.0 million dollars, during the same period. The results are pretty good compared to the same period of last year when the publisher lost more than 10 billion Yen although the company says that more than half of the revenue it has reported can be attributed to the pachinko business it runs in Japan.

The two biggest launched of the quarter for SEGA were Alpha Protocol and Iron Man 2. The first of the two titles was developed by Obsidian, their first new property they have created in quite some time, but it only managed to sell a bit more than 700,000 units worldwide, with the publisher confirming that the numbers are so low that the game will not be getting a sequel. Iron Man 2, which was tied with the launch of the second movie in the series, did a little better, managing to move more than 1.12 million units on all markets.

SEGA commented that, “While domestic sales were mostly firm, in the overseas markets, sales of new titles remained slow as affected by the adverse market condition.” North America, with sales of 1.68 million, is the most important market for SEGA, with Europe next and Japan last, with only 270,000 copies of games moved to players. The results mean that future strategy for all Japan based publishers needs to take into account that Western markets will be crucial to their long term success.

The biggest project SEGA currently has in development is Shogun 2: Total War, a strategy game put together by The Creative Assembly that is set to arrive in 2011.