Sega Sammy's sales and earnings were up in the first nine months of the year. Through December 2010, the company saw net sales of 310,103 million yen, up 8.7% from the same nine month period the year prior. Operating income was up 118.2% to 62,970 million yen.
As usual the pachinko business is mixed in with the overall numbers, so we'll have to go division by division to see how Sega's gaming business is performing.
The company's consumer division, which includes both video games and toys, saw an 18.9% drop in sales to 67,413 million yen. Video game software alone saw a 25.4% drop in sales to 36,800 billion yen. Operating income for the division increased 98.4% to 2,811 million yen.
In its earnings report, the company noted that it released such games as Sonic Colors, Vanquish, Football Manager 2011 and Shining Hearts in the third quarter. Overseas sales for new titles were slow due to adverse market conditions, the company said. In Japan, however, sales were solid.
Total software unit sales stood at 13.63 million units. This splits 5.77 million for the US, 5.95 million for Europe and 1.9 million for Japan.
In contrast, the first nine months of last year saw 16.73 million units. The greatest drop came in Europe, which saw 8.16 million units shipped last year. Japan saw a net gain in shipments from last year's 2.47 million units.
Sonic Colors was Sega's top selling title, with 1.85 million units shipped worldwide across DS and Wii. The Platinum Games-developed Vanquish was second with 820,000 units. Football Manager 2011 was third with 690,000 across PC and PSP.
Xbox 360 was Sega's biggest platform over the nine month period, selling 1.48 million units across 11 SKUs. PSP sold 1.44 million units, also across 11 SKUs. Wii followed with 1.42 million units across 9 SKUs. DS saw 1.34 million units across 9 SKUs and PS3 1.13 million units across 7 SKUs.