Bandai, Japan's largest toy maker and one of the world's largest third party publishers of video games has announced its financial results for the first half of the current fiscal year today and gave an outlook on its expectations for the full FY 2003/2004.

The company reported a net profit of 6.7 billion yen ($61.15 million USD) for the peroid from April 1st until September 30th. Compared to the same period of the last fiscal year, this translates to a decline of 5%. Bandai blamed the lower net profit on weak demand for game software and losses at its subsidaries. For the full fiscal year however, it projects sales of 255 billion yen ($2.33 billion USD) and a record net profit of 14.2 billion yen ($129.61 million USD).

• Yahoo Asia News