SEGA Posts Profit, Reveals Shipment Numbers

Despite an admittedly stagnant Japanese economy and "generally weak" demand for video games in North America and Europe, things are looking up for entertainment conglomerate SEGA SAMMY compared to where it was a year ago.

Though net sales between April and December 2009 were down 7.7% over the previous year, the company saw net income of 16.94 billion yen ($189.9M USD)--a significant improvement over the previous year's net loss of 10.84 billion yen ($121.5M USD).

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games and Bayonetta

In particular, the company's consumer business (home video game software, toys and animated films) saw net sales drop by 13.6% to 83.1 billion yen ($931.4M USD), with an operating income of 1.4 billion yen ($15.9M USD). The same period last year saw the same segment post an operating loss of 5.6 billion yen ($63.3M USD).

In addition, the company provided a breakdown of software shipments:

• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games - Wii, Nintendo DS

  5.67 million (US, Europe)

• BAYONETTA - PS3, Xbox 360

  1.1 million (US, Europe, Japan)

• Football Manager 2010 - PSP, PC

  740K (US, Europe)

• Phantasy Star Portable 2 - PSP

  540K (Japan)