Nintendo Raises Profit Forecasts By 20%

Officials from Nintendo have announced that the company is raising its full year profit forecasts by 20 percent to a total of ¥120 billion ($1.01bn), for the twelve months ending March 31st, 2007. The company’s net sales forecast was raised by 21.6 percent to ¥900 billion ($7.54bn) for the full year, with income before income taxes and extraordinary items up by 23.5 percent ¥210 billion ($1.76bn). The reasons given for the increase in an official Nintendo of Japan statement were better than expected worldwide sales for the Nintendo DS console and its software, as well as “favorable sales of other products”. The company also benefited from beneficial exchange rates. Hardware sales predictions for the DS by the end of March were raised by 15 percent to 23 million, broken down to 4.8 million for Japan, 2.9 million for the Americas and 3.8 million for the rest of the world. Software sale predictions for the DS were raised by 22 percent to 100 million units. The performance so far of the Wii was not explicitly referred to, with hardware forecasts remaining the same at six million units. However, software estimates for Nintendo's new console were raised from 17 million to 21 million units.