Nintendo Profits Rise As Sales Dip

Officials from Nintendo have released details of the company’s consolidated financial results for the six month period ended September 30. During this time, the company achieved net sales of ¥188 billion ($1.8bn), down 11.1 percent from the same period last year. However, the group operating profit rose from ¥28.77 billion ($280m) in 2003 to ¥40.01 billion ($389m) this year. The company has raised its predictions for the full year operating profit from ¥110 billion ($1.0bn) to ¥120 billion ($1.1bn). Sales are expected to be ¥540 billion ($5.2 billion) with net profit also increasing from ¥70 billion ($682m) to ¥90 billion ($877m). The company also raised its sales predictions for the Nintendo DS from 3.5 million to 5 million world-wide, and the Game Boy Advance from 14 million to 16 million. GameCube sales were revised downwards from 5 million to 4.5 million. Total lifetime sales for the Game Boy Advance were put at 58,130,000 units and the GameCube at 15,970,000. The former makes it the second best selling console of the current generation, behind the PlayStation 2’s user base of approximately 72 million consoles. Microsoft has not released new figures for the Xbox recently, but world-wide sales are thought to be within a million or so of the GameCube total.