Nintendo Posts Annual Report

Nintendo has released its Annual Report. For all the Juicy bits click the for the full story. Interesting Quote’s and Comments in BOLD. Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — Nintendo Co., the world’s biggest maker of hand-held game machines, raised its annual profit and sales forecasts because of demand for its newest hand-held video- game player, which reached U.S. stores on Sunday.

Net income will probably total 90 billion yen ($876 million) in the 12 months ending March 31, 7 percent higher than the 84 billion yen forecast in October, the Kyoto, Japan-based company said today. Nintendo had net income of 33 billion yen a year ago.

Profit may almost triple this year because of rising demand for the Nintendo DS and related games, Nintendo said. The DS is at the center of Nintendo’s push to defend its dominance of the $4 billion hand-held game market as Tokyo-based Sony Corp. prepares to enter portable gaming for the first time.

“This is the honeymoon period for the DS,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, director of Japanese equity sales at KBC Financial Products in London, which has a “buy” rating on Nintendo. “Sony will take a significant and notable market share from Nintendo over the next 12 months.”

Nintendo expects to ship 5 million DS units this business year, more than its initial target of 4 million units, the company said. The console will start selling in Japan on Dec. 2 and in Europe “before Easter,” Yoshihiro Mori, a senior managing director at Nintendo, told reporters today in Osaka.

“Our game machines can be easily played by anybody and differs with Sony in that approach,” Mori said.

Competition

With commercials for the DS pegged to the tagline “Touching is Good,” Nintendo is moving away from its image as a maker of fuzzy game characters to appeal to adults.

The new hand-held game console, which debuted in the U.S. on Nov. 21, has voice recognition capabilities and is equipped with two screens, one of which is touch sensitive.

Sony will start selling its PlayStation Portable, or PSP, in Japan on Dec. 12. The company expects to ship 500,000 PSPs to Japanese retailers by the end of the year and 3 million worldwide by March 31. The PSP will be able to play videos and music in addition to games using an optical disc, Sony has said.

With the help of DS, Nintendo expects full-year sales to total 540 billion yen, up from an earlier estimate of 530 billion yen, the company said today in a statement accompanying its release of final first-half earnings results.

Nintendo also expects to ship 16 million GameBoy Advance SP units this year, more than the 14 million it forecast earlier, as the company lowers prices of the predecessor to the DS. Shipments of games for the device will total 77 million units, up from the initial 70 million units it forecast.

Mariners Bought

For the six months ended Sept. 30, net income totaled 46.4 billion yen, compared with a loss of 2.9 billion a year earlier, as company benefited from a strong yen, Nintendo said. The figures were in line with its preliminary earnings announcement on Oct. 4.

Operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, rose 39 percent to 40 billion yen in the first half from 28.8 billion yen a year earlier.

Nintendo took a 3.2 billion yen charge to increase its stake in U.S. Major League Baseball team Seattle Mariners, the home team of players such as Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki, according to today’s report.

With the company now owning more than 50 percent of the team, Nintendo will benefit from broadcasting and merchandise revenue from the Mariners, which had the third-worst record in the MLB in the most recent season.

Source : PlanetGamecube