Latest profit predictions available! Head on in for some good and bad news.

Following on from November's upscaling of profit forecasts, Nintendo has back-tracked to previous forecast figures. They now expect to match the original figure of 110 Billion Yen for full year operating profits. But there's good news for the company as they stated that group net profits had risen in the 9 months to December at 67.76 Billion Yen. A fall in the value of the Yen is in part responsible for this rise. If you remember last year, the high price of the Yen against the Dollar caused many Japanese companies to receive lower proits than expected.

According to Reuters, who did some rather confusing maths, estimated group net profit for the three months ending 2004 was down by 43%. Shares in the company fell by 2.3% on the announcement of the figures revision.

This cloud does however have a silver lining: DS Hardware sales forecasts are up again, now to 6 million units from 5 million previously predicted. That said, sofware sales forecasts have been revised down to 10 million.

The reason given for this by the company was surprisingly frank: there just isn't much software available for the machine, with Nintendo having decided to hold back release of new titles for the unit until the new business year.

In addition, the inclusion of the Metroid Prime Hunters demo in the US and the high popularity of the built-in PictoChat software have led consumers to use the system for wireless gaming fun with only one cartridge in the slot.

All in all, a mixture of the bitter and the sweet for everyone's favourite Japanese Giant. No, not Godzilla. Nintendo.