Empire Sees Drop In Half Year Results

Officials from British publisher Empire Interactive have announced the company’s financial results for the six month period ended 30th June. During this period turnover fell from £18.6 million ($33.7m) to £12.1 million ($21.9m) and gross profit dropped from £11.3 million ($20.5m) at the same time last year to £6.5 million ($11.8m) this year. Pre-tax earnings also fell from a profit of £2.1 million ($3.8m) to a loss of £0.9 million ($1.6m). The company attributed the disappointing figures to an unusually strong first half in 2003 and expects solid results for the full year, thanks to a strong Christmas line-up of titles that includes Bad Boys II, Ford Racing 3 and FlatOut. The company has previously licensed a number of its titles, most recently FlatOut, to Vivendi Universal Games for publishing in the U.S. Empire will also continue to work with Japanese publishers, having previously published a number of Sega PC titles, with the announcement that it will publish Taito Arcade Classics (including games such as Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble and Operation Wolf) in the Europe and North America.