Aliens: Colonial Marines hits 1.3 million sales

Sega has released its financial results for the business year ended March 31 2013, revealing that Aliens: Colonial Marines sold just over 1.3 million copies during the period. While it received a poor critical reception, the console and PC shooter was Sega’s second best-selling title of the year, coming in just 50,000 units behind fellow multiplatform release Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.

PC and PSP title Football Manager 2013 chalked up 940,000 sales, ahead of London 2012: The Official Video Game’s 680,000, while Japan-only PS3 exclusive Yakuza 5 shifted 590,000 copies. Sega's consumer business, which houses games, saw revenues drop 2.1 per cent year-on-year to 83.8 billion yen (£536m / $827m). Parent company Sega Sammy's net sales declined 18.7 per cent year-on-year to 321 billion yen ($2b / $3.2b), but profits increased 53.3 per cent to 33.5 billion yen (£214m / $330).

Sega Sammy said: "In the home video game software industry, demand weakened for packaged games due to the severe economic environment mainly in the US and Europe. Meanwhile, Sega Sammy Group needs to adapt to a changing business environment in which market demand for digital games geared toward social networking services (SNS) and smartphones is expanding further.

"The packaged game software field in the consumer business will undergo rationalization, in an effort to establish a structure that can consistently generate profit. We also intend to make our game software compatible with the next-generation game machines, which are due to be launched."