Nintendo had a stellar year with strong showings by Color Gameboy and N64 software sales. All eyes are on big N's next generation game machine, which will go up right against Playstation2 next year. Remember the hardware will probably be comparable, so the quality of software will be the deciding factor. Even with the media's recent infatuation with Sony's technology, do not count Nintendo out. Titles like Zelda64 show that big N still knows console gaming.
Nintendo shares rose 4 percent after the world's second-largest maker of home video games said profit rose to a six-year high, beating analysts' expectations. The Kyoto, Japan-based company rose 560 yen to 14,480. A total of 683,000 shares were traded, 61 percent more than the full-day average over the past three months. Nintendo's earnings were boosted by the release of a color version of its hand-held Game Boy machine and new software titles for the Nintendo 64 console. Its group current profit, or pretax profit before one-time items, rose 4.9 percent in the year ended March 31 to 165.2 billion yen ($1.35 billion) on sales of 572 billion yen, up 7 percent. "Nintendo's figures are excellent, but the good ship Nintendo is crashing into the gigantic iceberg of PlayStation2 in less than a year," said Scott McGlashan, director and head of Far Eastern investments at Perpetual, referring to the debut by March 2000 of the successor to Sony Corp.'s popular PlayStation video-game console. - Bloomberg
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