GameStop second-quarter sales beat expectations; shares rise

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - GameStop Corp on Thursday reported its quarterly revenue surged by 25 percent over the prior year, topping expectations, buoyed by the success of new game releases as well as solid sales of gaming hardware from Microsoft and Sony Corp.

Revenue for the fiscal second quarter ended Aug. 2 rose to $1.73 billion. Wall Street on average had expected the U.S. game store chain to report revenue of $1.65 billion. Shares of the company gained 6.2 percent to $43 after-hours, from a close of $40.49 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Titles such as Ubisoft`s "Watch Dogs" and Nintendo`s "Mario Kart 8" drove a 15.6 percent gain in new software sales and a 21.9 percent gain in comparable-store sales. Strong demand for Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's Playstation 4 helped new hardware sales more than double.

Net earnings for the second quarter more than doubled to $24.6 million, or 22 cents a share, from $10.5 million, or 9 cents a share, a year earlier.

For its fiscal third quarter, GameStop forecast comparable store sales growth of 1 to 5 percent. It maintained its outlook for fiscal 2014 diluted earnings per share at $3.40 to $3.70.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)