Namco Bandai Reports Modest Sales Boost, Swing To Profit For Holiday Quarter

Tekken house Namco Bandai on Thursday reported a slight increase in revenues and a swing from loss to profit for the the third fiscal quarter ended December 31. Sales for the quarter were ¥114.4 billion ($1.4 billion), up 4 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Profits hit ¥5.6 billion ($68.7 million) during the quarter, up from a loss of ¥5.7 billion ($69.9 million) a year prior. Namco Bandai sold 15.3 million home video game software units in the first nine months of the fiscal year through December, and projects total software sales to hit 22.7 million by the end of the full fiscal year. The aging Tekken 6 -- released in October 2009 -- led Namco Bandai's software unit sales for the nine months with 1.1 million units sold during the period in the U.S. alone. The company said in August last year that the game had sold over 3 million units total. April 2010's Ben 10 Ultimate Alien was the second-best-selling game for the nine month period with 490,000 units sold in the U.S. and Europe. Japan's God Eater: Burst for PSP sold 460,000 units during the period, and the Ninja Theory-developed Enslaved: Odyssey to the West sold 460,000 units in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Both games released in October last year. November's Splatterhouse did not make it into the publisher's top five-selling games for the nine months. Total sales for the nine months through December were ¥288 billion ($3.5 billion), up 2 percent year-on-year. Profits were ¥3.7 billion ($45.4 million), up from a loss of ¥11.7 billion ($143.7 million) a year ago. During the nine months, game software generated ¥54.7 billion ($671 million) in sales, down from ¥60 billion ($736.4 million) for the same period a year ago. The company also houses toys and hobby and amusement facility businesses. For the full fiscal year ending March 31, the publisher expects sales to rise 4.3 percent year-on-year to ¥395 billion ($4.85 billion). Profits are expected to hit ¥1.8 billion ($22.1 million), up from a loss of ¥29.9 billion ($366.8 million) last year. Namco Bandai Games America recently merged with the digital centric Namco Networks division as the company takes a stronger stance on non-retail products. The U.S. division's CEO Kenji Hisatsune told Gamasutra this week that the merger is officially complete, and acknowledged that "there is a decline in the packaged goods business today."