Nintendo Co. reported Thursday a 61 percent drop in profit as sales of its flagship Wii consoles fell for the first time since the product debuted in 2006.
Net income declined to ¥42.3 billion in the three months that ended June 30, compared with ¥107.4 billion a year earlier, Nintendo said. That missed the ¥47.5 billion median of five analyst estimates.
Sales of the Wii and the portable DS players fell as the global slump drove down demand for electronics. President Satoru Iwata faces mounting pressure to release new products as Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. develop motion-sensing features for their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 machines, while Apple Inc.'s iPods and iPhones become increasingly popular as hand-held gaming devices.
"There hasn't been a novel announcement by Nintendo lately," Koki Shiraishi, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd., said before the announcement. "My attention is on whether Nintendo can make the most of its uniqueness to release a strong product before the yearend shopping season."
Revenue dropped 40 percent to ¥253.5 billion, worse than the ¥320 billion median of five analyst estimates in the analyst survey.
Nintendo's stock has lost more than 60 percent of its value since it peaked in November 2007, wiping away almost all of its gains since the Wii's release more than two years ago.
The company maintained its forecast to sell 26 million Wii consoles during the year ending March 2010, almost the same as the previous year.
Nintendo's game lineup has weakened since last year, when "Mario Kart" and "Wii Fit" debuted, Shiraishi said.