Taito today announced its financial results for the previous fiscal year which ended on March 31st. While sales rose by 1.9% compared to fiscal year 2003/2004, to reach 84.56 billion yen ($800.53 million US), net profit was down by 51.1% to reach 1.78 billion yen ($16.85 million US). Please note, that these figures are not consolidated as usual in our coverage, because Taito has yet to publish its consolidated results.

While the company's arcade and mobile content divisions can look back at a successful 12-month period, the (console) game business saw its sales decline by 24.6% to 6.74 billion yen ($63.81 million US). Costs related to opening new game centers and renovating existing also contributed to the lower than expected profit figure.

For the current fiscal year, Taito projects a net profit of 2.3 billion yen ($21.77 million US) on sales of 92 billion yen ($870.97 million US). In order to achieve these projections, the company plans to focus its resources on its arcade and content service operations, while reducing the development costs of its console games.

Following a licensing deal with Nihon Falcom last year, Taito has already released Zwei and Ys III: Wanderers from Ys for PlayStation 2 in Japan. A remake of Ys IV: Mask of the Sun -a new theory- will follow on May 26th.

• IT Media Games