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About every quarter we get a look at how some companies who are in the arcade business did financially, particularly those based in Japan. These reports don’t really show us how business fared outside of Japan but they are still fun to look at. We’ve got two reports out, one for Sega Sammy and another for Namco Bandai. Where both of these companies have products in other areas outside of arcades, we have to do a little digging to get to the part we want. First with Sega Sammy – profits were up overall for the company and for the arcades (via Gamasutra):
Amusement machine sales, which includes arcade games, were down 17 percent to ¥34.6 billion ($422.1 million), and profits were ¥817 million ($10 million), up from a loss of ¥644 million ($7.9 million) for the same period a year ago.
The story is similar with their console games, where sales were down but profits were up. Their pachislot and pachinko divisions saw increased sales and profits which helped overall sales but as we can see, arcade profits were up which is a good thing.
For Namco the details on their latest earnings can be found here (PDF). You can find the arcade stuff at the bottom of page 2. They have some good projections for their amusement division for this year, including sales for Namco America and Europe, although we don’t have a picture of how games are selling on a machine-by-machine basis. They are projecting better sales for NA and NE than last year and in 2009 but we will ahve to wait and see what other projects they will release this year to help reach that projection.
I have had to review these figures (as well as the KDE and Taito/Square numbers) – and I am struck at how the losses of the console are hidden and the amusement sides are blamed for everything.
The fact of the new opening facilities in Taito and Namco numbers are ignored – along with a slew of brand new video releaes – when we were told that the amusement sector was dead everywhere!?
And to put a tin hat on all this – we now see that pachinko is going good numbers – when reality most of this is pachinslot and video medal machines!
And before anyone says it – Yes AOU will be smaller – but that dose not mean we are out for the count!
The SEGA numbers are particularly perplexing……..
So the revenue is $422.1 million but the profit is only $10 million????
What in Gods name are they doing over there????? Either they can’t control their costs, have enormous overhead or a combination of the 2……
Something just doesn’t make sense with the numbers they are posting.
The over-heads at Sega are huge – I have walked their JP campus!!
Now seems the consumer media is claiming that “…there is still life left in arcade.” – oh what a slump in sales can do!
http://www.tssznews.com/2011/02/04/inside-sega-sammys-q3-earnings-report/