The world's largest maker of portable game consoles, Japan's Nintendo said its group net profit came to 36.6 billion yen (308 million dollars) in the six-month period, down from 46.5 million dollars a year earlier.
Sales fell 6.2 percent to 176.36 billion yen with pretax profit down 28.3 percent at 56.8 billion yen. Both game console and games software sales sent its net profit down 21 percent in the first half to September.
Nintendo blamed the decline on a slump in sales of its flagship Gameboy series portable game consoles and stand-alone game console, the Gamecube, amid tough competition with its domestic rival Sony's PlayStation Portable.
"In the video game industry, the handheld game market performed well," Nintendo said. "On the other hand, the market for the current generation of console hardware is becoming saturated and is approaching a traditional phase to next generation consoles," it said. "As a result, the overall video game market generally showed a declining tendency." Nintendo introduced late last year a new portable game console which has a dual screen but its introduction failed to offset the slide in sales of the Gameboy family.
Next year Nintendo will launch its next-generation Revolution home video game console, going head-to-head with Microsoft's Xbox 360 which goes on sale in Japan in December, and Sony's PlayStation3 which is due out next year.