14 DAY TRIAL // Konami has announced its financial results for the first fiscal quarter of the year, showing that it has more than tripled its profits even it a tough business environment meant that overall revenue was down. Konami is involved in more than video games and its business, which includes arcades, slot machines and toys, saw a decline from 56 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 650.4 million dollars, to about 53.1 billion. The video game business is the main reason for the spectacular increase in profit, which went from 367 million Yen, which is about 4.2 million dollars, during the same period of last year, to 1.27 billion Yen, which translates into 14.8 million.
The biggest reason for the profit increase has been Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a new game in the long running Snake powered series that arrived exclusively on the PlayStation Portable from Sony. The game was launched both in Japan and in the United States during the three months and managed to sell quite well. In Japan Konami also pointed to strong performance thanks to romantic simulators like Love Plus+ and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3rd Story. The game division managed to sell more than 25 billion Yen worth of video games.
Konami says that it is aiming to make more of an impact overseas during this year, with the launch of titles adapted for the Western market, like Karaoke Revolution Glee, Def Jam Rapstar and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. A statement also reads “Furthermore, we will also devote our efforts to the online marketing of titles for the increasing number of game consoles with network connectivity as well as mobile phones and mobile terminals.”
Still Konami is pretty dependent on Kojima Productions and on the Metal Gear franchise and one of the big questions is whether the upcoming Rising game can be launched before the end of March 2011. Recently Kojima said that the game was not even closed to completion.