Nintendo expects 75 billion yen profit this financial year, down from 87.4 billion last year.

The company has said its first-half operating profit has plunged 51 percent, hurt by sluggish GameCube sales. The company is expecting 3 percent decline in revenue for the full year Cube sales dwindle and it earns less on the DS due to a recent price cut.

Nintendo is facing renewed competition from Microsoft with the newly launched Xbox 360. Not only that, but with the Revolution release still some time off (and likely to launch behind the PS3) and record-breaking development costs for Revolution as well as DS games, Nintendo has cut its full-year sales targets in terms of units for DS to 12 million and for GameCube to 2.4 million, though it raised its forecast slightly for Game Boy Advance to 11 million, which has been helped by the launch of Micro.

"Sales of our most profitable machine, GameCube, have fallen while sales of DS, which has a low margin, are replacing sales of the higher-margin Game Boy Advance SP," said Yoshihiro Mori, senior managing director at Nintendo, who declined to comment on the Revolution's launch window, merely saying it would be in time for the 2006 holiday season at the latest.