Japan's Nintendo company posted a 21% gain in quarterly operating profit on brisk demand for its Wii video game console and DS handheld game player, but it cut its forecast due to a stronger yen.
Nintendo booked strong sales for both the Wii and DS in the Christmas shopping season, proving itself relatively resilient to a global economic slowdown that has slammed rival electronics firms.
But Nintendo's outlook is tempered by a rising yen, which makes its consoles less competitive and cuts into the value of overseas earnings. Nintendo gets more than three-quarters of its sales outside Japan.
The company, locked in a three-way battle with Microsoft's XBox and Sony's PlayStation in the video game market, lowered its forecast for the year to the end of March to 530 billion yen from a previous 630 billion yen estimate.
Nintendo had been widely expected to trim its outlook given that it was based on dollar/yen and euro/yen assumptions of 100 and 140, respectively. The dollar is currently fetching about 89 yen, while the European currency is trading around 118 yen.
The group said that its October-December operating profit rose to 249.2 billion from 205.3 billion yen a year earlier.
