Nintendo has posted a loss of 2.89 billion yen ($26.57 million US) during the first six months of the current fiscal year, the company announced today. Lower-than-expected GameCube sales as well as the strong yen were cited as main reasons for the company's first loss since going public in 1962. Nonetheless, Nintendo expects a net profit of 60 billion yen ($551.62 million US) on sales of 550 billion yen ($5.06 billion US) for the full fiscal year ending on March 31st 2004. Shipment targets for both, GameCube and GameBoy Advance remained unchanged at six and 20 million units respectively. In addition, the Kyoto-based company will debut a new hardware during the 2004 edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. It remains to be seen whether the mysterious new console will be successor to the GameCube or the best-selling Game Boy Advance (SP) handheld system.

• Bloomberg Japan