Japan's Nintendo today reported a 41.6 per cent slide in operating profit for the latest year.
The drop came due to slack game sales, but analysts expect Nintendo's popular new portable game machines to revive earnings this year.
The weaker earnings, which analysts had expected, reflected sagging sales of Nintendo64 game consoles and Game Boy's worse-than-expected performance - due in part to a delay in the release of new games in the blockbuster Pokémon series in Europe.
The company, known for games featuring characters such as Mario Brothers and Pokémon, plans to launch its new GameCube home game console on September 14th in Japan, followed by a November 5th debut in the United States.
Nintendo hopes to grab a bigger slice of the lucrative market, battling against Sony Corp's popular PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Corp's Xbox game system to be launched in November in the United States.