Nintendo Co Ltd say it expects pretax profit to rise 13% in the year ending March 1998 to roughly $960m, after a 14% fall in pretax profit in fiscal 1996, according to the Nikkei Daily News. The video game giant projects revenue of approximately $3.5bn in fiscal 1997. Sales of the Nintendo 64 console are expected to double to 12 million machines and software sales to surge 140% to 40 million units. About 70% of the sales should come from overseas, mainly in the US. The company’s overall export ratio is forecast at 65%, up from 52%. Projections are based on the assumption that the dollar will average 120 yen over the course of the year, compared with 112 yen in fiscal 1996. For the year ended March 1997, pretax profit fell 14% to $848m on revenue up 15% at $2.9bn. Net profit slid 30% to $305m. The profit decline is being blamed on lower sales of more profitable software as a result of the model shift to Nintendo 64. Nintendo’s announcement follows last week’s projection by rival Sony Corp that net sales of its 32-bit PlayStation console and its software will reach $5.28bn this year, up from $3.25bn. The company expects to ship 18 million PlayStations, up from an estimated 8.9 million. As a result of this competition, in March Nintendo cut the US price of Nintendo 64 from $200 to $150 (CI No 3,115).
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