Nintendo has posted its financial results for the fiscal year ending on March 31st 2003. The company's consolidated net profit was down by 38% compared to the previous term to 66 billion yen (548.40 million USD). Earlier projections spoke of a net profit of 80 billion yen (664.73 million USD). Sales were down by 10% to 500 billion yen (4.15 billion USD), with earlier projections speaking of 600 billion yen (4.99 billion USD). The reason for the decline in both sales and profit are sluggish GameCube sales. Instead of an originally estimated 10 million units, Nintendo has only sold 5.6 million units of its console. Correspondingly, only 44.5 million copies of GameCube software were sold, compared to an originally expected number of 55 million copies.

However, the newly introduced GameBoy Advance SP has been a run-away hit, selling 600,000 units in Japan, 800,000 in North America and 400,000 in Europe.

• Nikkei Net
• Famitsu