14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese based company Nintendo raised on Tuesday its annual net income forecast for the 2006-2007 business year at US$ 850 million (100 billion yen). This comes as a result of strong sales registered by Nintendo DS games console. The new target is higher by 20.5 percent in comparison with earlier target of 83 billion yen.
Nintendo has had ups and downs over the years as in early 2005, they reported a 78.5 percent decline in operating profit. The financial upset was due mainly to the low number of GameCube releases in the US and to low sales figures registered by Game Boy Advance SP and GameCube.
The most successful games console produced by Nintendo is Game Boy Advanced as it registered sales of 75.1 million units worldwide, 38.1 million units of those were sold in the Americas as of March 21, 2006.
Nintendo GameCube ranks second with 20.9 million units sold worldwide and 12.2 million units in the Americas.
According to Nintendo's annual report, the company plans to expand the gaming population by introducing Nintendo DS. The new device is meant for gaming and comes with a touch screen and microphone port along with wireless communication capability. Nintendo expects further sales increases by adding Nintendo DS Lite to the Nintendo DS range and by introducing Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, a wireless Internet service meant for the DS.