Namco today announced a 180 percent increase in profits over the last six months thanks to the success of several key titles.

Driving up the profits was Namco's popular title Soul Calibur II, which achieved success in every major world region. The success of Soul Calibur is mostly due to sales of the GameCube version of the title.

The other key title was said to be Taiko no Tatsujin (Drum Expert), a Japanese rhythm action title.

Namco reported a final earnings figure of 3.7 billion Yen (�28.5 million) on sales of 83.6 billion Yen (�643.8 million), and projects earnings of 6.6 billion Yen (�50.8 million) on sales of 174.6 billion Yen (�1.4 billion) for the full year through to March.