Nintendo posts 60.6% fall in April-June net profit+

OSAKA, July 30 Kyodo -
Nintendo Co. said Thursday its group net profit in the first quarter of fiscal
2009 fell 60.6 percent from a year earlier to 42.32 billion yen, due largely to
a stronger yen and a lack of popular software to stimulate demand for its Wii
and DS game consoles.

For the April-June period, the Kyoto-based game creator also reported an
operating profit of 40.40 billion yen, down 66.1 percent, on sales of 253.50
billion yen, down 40.1 percent.
Based on the latest data, Nintendo's revenue and profit during the April to
June period both declined for the first time in four years.
Nintendo had been a bright spot, fending off the effects of the global economic
slowdown that has hurt corporate earnings worldwide.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2008, the firm logged a record-high net profit
of 107.27 billion yen on strong global demand for Wii game consoles.
For the reporting quarter, Nintendo said global sales of its Wii console
totaled 2.23 million units, bringing cumulative sales to 52.62 million units
since the console was launched in December 2006.
Sales of the console were down from the corresponding period a year earlier,
when they totaled 5.17 million units thanks to the popularity of software such
as the ''Wii Fit'' home exercise game.
Worldwide sales of the DS handheld console, released in December 2004,
decreased nearly 1 million units to 5.97 million, with accumulated sales
reaching 107.75 million units, Nintendo said.
For the whole of the fiscal year to March 31, Nintendo is forecasting a group
net profit of 300 billion yen, up 7.5 percent from the previous year, and an
operating profit of 490 billion yen, down 11.8 percent, on sales of 1.8
trillion yen, down 2.1 percent.
''It is possible to recover since (the April-June result) was not due to the
recession but rather the absence of hit products,'' Satoru Iwata, president of
Nintendo, told a press conference in Osaka, indicating that new software will
help to spur sales of the game consoles.
==Kyodo
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