Nintendo unveils fall in first-quarter profits to £125m

Japanese video game maker Nintendo has reported its first-quarter profit dipped to about half of what it was a year ago despite improved sales as an unfavourable exchange rate eroded earnings.

Nintendo said its profit in the April-June quarter totalled 16.6 billion yen (£125 million), down from 30.6 billion yen (£231 million) the year before. Quarterly sales rose 2% to 172 billion yen (£1.3 billion).

Nintendo sold 2.13 million Nintendo Switch machines for the period.

The Switch is a hybrid game machine that works both as a console and a tablet. More than 36.87 million consoles have been sold since sales began about two years ago.

Nintendo’s forecasts for the fiscal year were unchanged at 180 billion yen (£1.39 billion) profit on 1.25 trillion yen (£9.45 billion) sales.