Sega Profits Surge On Arcade Titles, Despite EA Sports Domination

Thanks to Reuters for their story revealing Sega's profits jumped 485 percent for the first half of the fiscal year, to 5.93 billion yen ($54.53 million), largely due "to strong sales of its [Japanese] arcade game machines such as [popular crane game] 'UFO Catcher 7' and [intriguing arcade-based CCG] 'The Key of Avalon'." Elsewhere, Sega's consumer division "...posted an operating loss of 1.8 billion yen, but it was less than it expected because of solid sales of its soccer simulation and car racing games." However, the company "...trimmed its projection of key U.S. sports games to 1.73 million from 2.6 million units", still dogged by Electronic Arts' domination of the genre, as the president said: "We need to carefully plan how to compete with EA in terms of marketing, but we believe our games can win more market share because of their high quality."

Comments

Initial D

[AlexMax2742]

Anyone else play Initial D? It is quite possibly the most fun SEGA racing game ever made. Only problem is that it's rather rare, as the machine itself is expensive as all get out...up there with Beatmania IIDX in terms of price. Not to mention the fact that the flatscreen deluxe version of Initial D costs even more. My arcade is lucky enough to have two v1 machines in their standard cabinets and two v2 machines in deluxe cabinets, but I'm sure it's the only place like it in the southeast..

Now all I have to do is wait for Initial D : Special Stage to be released stateside....I hope they add iLink support or 2 player or else I'm going to be extremely pissed.