Ninty concedes the GameCube is nearing the end of its life in America as sales figures drop. Profits remain high, however.

Earnings have dropped 6.9 percent on this time last year to 175 billion yen ($1.53 billion), compared with 188 billion yen ($1.65 billion) a year earlier. This means Nintendo is behind its ambitious forecast of 190 billion yen ($1.67 billion).

Nintendo's senior managing director, Yoshihiro Mori, blamed a drop in demand for the Cube as the main factor for the dip in profit. "The big drop for GameCube games was in North America. ... It looks like the product's life is nearing its end," Mori said, as Nintendo admitted it is now selling 60 percent less Cube games than this time last year.

Apparently, between February's Resident Evil 4 and August's Madden NFL 06, not one GameCube game cracked the US top 20 charts.

Profit for this six-month period has been 36 billion yen ($316 million), though this is lower than the 46.4 billion yen ($407 million) from last year. However Nintendo are still confident they will hit their twelve-month forecast of 75 billion yen ($658.8 billion) due to good exchange rates for the Yen.