Profit at Sega Sammy Plunges in 1Q

[JKKDARK]

via International Business Times

Sega Sammy Holdings, formed by the merger of a game maker and a pinball company, said Friday its profit tumbled 34 percent for the year ended March on the slump at Japanese-style "'pachinko"' pinball parlors.

The Japanese amusement-machine manufacturer, which did not breakdown quarterly earnings, posted a 43.5 billion yen ($363 million) profit for the fiscal year, down from a 66.2 billion yen the previous year.

Quarterly sales slipped 4.5 percent to 528.2 billion yen ($4.4 billion) from 553.2 billion yen.

The results were below the Tokyo-based company's earlier forecasts for a 60 billion yen ($501 million) profit and a market consensus of 58 billion yen ($484 million).

Sega, which makes Sonic the Hedgehog games, and Sammy, which makes a type of upright pinball game called pachinko, merged in October 2004.

Sega Sammy said pachinko machine sales nose-dived 20 percent in the past fiscal year, and times will continue to be tough in that business in coming months, and projected a deteriorating 35 billion yen ($292 million) profit for the fiscal year through March 2008.

Shares of Sega Sammy fell 1.5 percent to 2,895 yen ($24).

[Basil Zero]

Ouch, surprised that they lost so much money, even though they released alot of titles.

[ShinMike]

and a lot of bad titles