Nintendo Profit Drops 21% on Slumping Sales

Profit at Nintendo Co., which makes Super Mario video games and Game Boy Advance hand-held machines, slipped 21% in the company’s fiscal first half because of slumping sales of consoles and game software.

The Kyoto, Japan-based video game maker said Thursday that its net income for the six months ended Sept. 30 slipped to 36.6 billion yen ($324 million) from 46.45 billion yen a year earlier.

Sales dropped 6% to 176.4 billion yen ($1.56 billion). Breakdowns for numbers by quarter weren’t available.

Nintendo forecast a 75-billion-yen profit for the full year ending March 31 on 500 billion yen in sales.

The company said its GameCube sales in North America came to 630,000 units for the half, down 36%, as buyers awaited the introduction of next-generation game consoles.

Nintendo plans to launch a new Revolution machine in 2006, while rival Sony Corp. will unveil the PlayStation 3.