Nintendo sales jump on 3DS console demand, but net profit falls

Nintendo said on Wednesday its six-month sales jumped on upbeat demand for its 3DS handheld console and games for its Wii U system, but net profit tumbled.

The Kyoto-based firm also benefited from strong demand for its "Amiibo" figurines, which feature characters from some of its videogames, and the Wii U shooting game 'Splatoon', which was released earlier this year, said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo.

"The impact of the weak yen was also a major contributor," he said before the earnings were published.

A sharp decline in the yen has boosted the fortunes of major Japanese exporters, including Nintendo, by making them more competitive overseas and inflating the value of repatriated earnings.

Nintendo said revenue was 204.1 billion yen ($1.7 billion), up 19 percent from a year ago, but its bottom line shrank nearly 20 percent to 11.4 billion yen, largely owing to a special gain booked in the year-earlier period.

Questions about the Super Mario and Donkey Kong creator's future have swirled around the iconic company after chief executive Satoru Iwata, a leading figure in the videogame industry, died of cancer at the age of 55 in the summer.

A visibly thinner Iwata announced last year that he was sick, although the severity of his illness was unclear at the time.

He returned to work over the following months and continued to be the public face of Nintendo.

Iwata oversaw the success of Nintendo's Wii console and a surge in revenue before smartphone games started eating away at its success.

The company tapped former banker Tatsumi Kimishima last month as its new president.

"Kimishima's mission is to guide the company on the path laid by Iwata," said Ace Research's Yasuda.

Nintendo has struggled in recent year in the face of stiff competition from Sony and Microsoft in console sales, and as the trio battle the trend toward cheap -- or sometimes free -- downloadable games for smartphones and other mobile devices.

Iwata had argued that venturing into the overpopulated world of smartphones and tablets risked hollowing out the core business and cannibalising the hard-fought value of their game creations.

But he later acknowledged Nintendo had little choice but to move into new areas.

The company in March unveiled plans to buy a stake in Tokyo-based mobile gaming company DeNA as part of a deal to develop smartphone games based on Nintendo's host of popular characters.

This could become a turning point for the Japanese giant which has long refused to enter the soaring market.

Iwata said in March the two companies will launch at least one game this year, but did not release any details about which characters would be made available to play on smartphones or tablets.

"The world is changing, so any company that is not coping with the change will fall into decline," he said.