Sega Sammy has reported a net loss of 22,882 million yen ($239.8m/£158.4m) for the year ended March 31, 2009, down from 52,470 million yen ($549.8/£364.2 million) the previous year.

During the same period sales declined 6.5 percent to 429,194 million yen ($4.5b/£3b).

The company’s consumer business segment, which includes videogames, posted a 7.5 percent decline in sales to 131,664 million yen ($1.38b/£911.3m). However, the division also heavily reduced an annual operating loss of 5,989 million yen ($62.8m/£41.5m) the previous fiscal year to 941 million yen ($9.9m/£6.5m).

“In the home videogame software industry, growth in demand for software has levelled off in Japan, due to widespread proliferation of the current generation of game platforms. Nevertheless, demand remains firm in Europe and North America,” the firm noted.

The company sold 29.47 million games throughout the year, 85 percent of which were evenly spread across Europe and the US.

Sega said that overseas game sales “were firm” thanks to titles such as Sonic Unleashed, Football Manager 2009 and Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games.

In Japan the company reported strong sales of Phantasy Star Portable and Ryu ga Gotoku 3 (Yakuza 3), “but other titles performed weakly.”

As previously reported by Edge, the company will adapt the structure of its videogame business this year.

“In the home videogame software category of the consumer business, the group will build a robust operational framework by bringing together the sales and manufacturing functions, and the group will strengthen alliances across Japan, North America and Europe,” Sega said.

“In addition, the group will work to raise business efficiency by narrowing down the number of titles handled. For the year, the group expects to sell 11,630 thousand copies of game software in the United States, 14,500 thousand copies in Europe and 3,570 thousand copies in Japan and other regions, for a total of 29,700 thousand copies.”

For the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2010, Sega Sammy is projecting group net sales down 2.1 percent to 420,000 million yen ($4.4b/£2.91b), a 222.8 percent year on year increase in operating income to 27,000 million yen ($283m/£187m), and expects net income to rebound from a loss to 15,000 million yen ($157.2m/£103.9m).