It's been a tough year for 4Kids Entertainment, as it was announced that sales fell over the past quarter once again. Third quarter 2009 sales results were an unimpressive $7.3 million, while sales from one year ago were over $10 million higher at $17.8 million. However the amount of loss was only about $5 million, which is slightly less loss seen between third quarter 2007 & third quarter 2008, which was $5.3 million. All in all, 4Kids has lost over $20 million since 2009 began.

CEO Al Kahn, pictured above, has called the past year "the most challenging period of my life." The company a lot of hope & money into their new Chaotic property & hoped that the card game for the franchise would turn the company around. However, Chaotic has deeply underperformed, & nearly every other 4Kids property saw fallen revenue as well.

The one major exception was actually 4Kids' (now) oldest property Yu-Gi-Oh, which saw a small increase over the past year. Not only did the sales for the card game go up recently, but ratings for their CW4Kids block have been on the rise recently too, mainly because they started re-airing the original Yu-Gi-Oh anime series. Coincidence? Al Kahn thinks not, saying rebroadcasting the original series has gotten new kids interested in the card game. This of course can't be good news for their dub of 5D's. If they're getting better ratings & sales from the original series, why bother spending money dubbing the series which hasn't been doing so well for them? Just like GX before it, it looks like 5D's may never get a finished English dub at this rate.

Source: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/16230.html