Hudson in the red

TOKYO--In its financial report issued today, Hudson Soft announced that it had a net loss of 8.24 billion yen ($77.5 million) for the business year ended March 31, 2005. Hudson's consumer game segment lost 545 million yen ($5.13 million), down from the 1.5 billion yen ($14 million) profit it earned in FY2004. While sales in Hudson's network content division were up by 30 percent, profits fell by 60 percent to 655 million yen ($6.16 million). The company also took an extraordinary one-time loss of 6.68 billion yen ($62.9 million), 4.44 billion yen ($41.8 million) of which came from the cancellation of projects.

Hudson announced last month that it was expecting significant losses and disclosed that it would issue an additional 3 million shares of stock to Konami to cushion the blow and to strengthen its reorganization. The transaction will make Konami, already a significant investor in the publisher, Hudson's majority shareholder and its parent company. Konami began buying shares of Hudson in 2001.

For the current business year started April 1, Hudson forecasts its sales at 12 billion yen ($113 million) and expects to bounce out of the red with a net profit of 300 million yen ($2.82 million). The company will be focusing on strengthening its network content segment and plans to expand both its online PC game offerings and its mobile phone game portfolio.

Hudson has revealed it will port Tengai Makyou II to the Nintendo DS this summer and bring Tengai Makyou: Daishi no Mokushiroku to Sony's PSP in the fall. The company also plans to develop another installment in its popular Mario Party series.

Tengai Makyou II was originally released on NEC's TurboGrafx CD in 1992, and the game was ported to the GameCube and PlayStation 2 in 2003. Tengai Makyou: Daishi no Mokushiroku was released on the Sega Saturn in 1997 but has never been translated to another platform. The games are known as the Far East of Eden series in English.