Nintendo Lowers Earnings Estimates

The Japanese videogame maker said it now expected a group recurring profit of seven billion yen ($57.46 million) for the six months, against its May forecast of 30 billion yen. For the full year through next March, the gamemaker lowered its estimate of group recurring profit to 110 billion yen from 150 billion yen, and group net profit to 80 billion yen from 90 billion yen. Faced with slack demand for its game systems in Japan and Germany, Nintendo trimmed its shipment target in 2002/03 for GameCube by 17 percent and for Game Boy Advance by 21 percent. But Nintendo, which plans to release a new game in its popular Zelda series later this year, raised its annual shipment goal for GameCube software to 55 million from 36 million.