Nintendo profit up 8.5 percent, Wii and DS sales peaked

Nintendo announced a record profit of 279.1 billion yen ($2.8 billion), up 8.5 percent from last year's 257.3 billion yen. Revenue shot up 9.9 percent to 1.839 trillion yen from 1.672 trillion year, with overseas sales accounting for 87.5 percent of the company's sales. The figures are better than the company's forecasts, and also beat analyst expectations.

For its next fiscal year Nintendo expects sales will drop 2.1 percent to 1.8 trillion yen, but profit is expected to rise 7.5 percent to 300 billion yen.

Driving Nintendo's fortunes are its Wii home console and DS portable, which have proven popular around the world.

The Wii, with its wandlike remote controller, has hit 50 million unit sales at the fastest pace of any video game machine ever, reaching a cumulative 50.39 million since its launch in late 2006. The Nintendo DS has also done well, already selling 101.78 million.

The results showed that machine sales fell short of the company's targets, although it lowered its forecasts for shipments recently.

Wii sales clocked in at 25.95 million units, less than the 26.5 million the company was counting on. Furthermore, sales of DS handheld consoles also fell short of expectations at 31.18 million versus a forecast of 31.5 million. For the next year Nintendo expects to ship 26 million Wii consoles and 30 million DS handhelds.

Source: AP