Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Sega Sammy Holdings reported healthy profits for the March-September period, with video games, amusement machines, pachinko, and pachislot offering solace for disappointing results from its resort businesses.
For the six month period, Sega Sammy reported ¥135 billion (US$1.2 billion) in overall sales and ¥12 billion (US$106 million) in company profits.
The largest contributor by far was the Entertainment Contents segment, which produced ¥107 billion (US$946 million) in net sales.
The company statement noted that “there has been a growing interest in the revitalization and growth of the game market on a global scale,” specifically citing “major changes to the market environment, such as the expansion of download sales for PCs, home video game consoles, etc., the emergence of cloud gaming services, and the diversification of platforms.”
Sega Sammy’s catalogue of console game titles have been selling briskly, and even the amusement machine UFO Catcher merited a mention.
Also notable was the Pachinko and Pachislot Machines segment, which saw its sales bounce back to more than double what they had been in the same period last year, in the early stages of the pandemic. Sega Sammy sold about 31,000 pachislot machines and 23,000 pachinko machines in the six-month period, recording a total of ¥23 billion (US$202 million) in net sales.
On the other hand, the firm’s resort business has suffered setbacks.
Although not having a major impact on its immediate financial fortunes, it was the Genting Singapore-Sega Sammy consortium which most observers expected to become Yokohama’s partner in developing the major Integrated Resort (IR) including a casino at Yamashita Pier. The election of a firmly anti-casino mayor, however, has brought that initiative to naught.
That leaves Sega Sammy with only its Phoenix Seagaia Resort in Miyazaki Prefecture and its 45% stake in the Paradise City IR in Incheon, South Korea, both of which have suffered downturns in connection with the Covid pandemic. This segment thus produced only ¥3.8 billion (US$33 million) in sales and operated at a loss of ¥4 billion (US$35 million).
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