Defying a globally depressed economy, Nintendo made nearly $3 billion last year, the Japanese company announced this morning. That’s up 8.5 percent from its previous fiscal year, which ends March 31.

The scary part? Nintendo didn’t actually meet projected sales on its blockbuster Wii and DS systems, so it had expected to make even more money.  Nevertheless, the company said it has sold more than 50 million Wiis and more than 100 million DS systems to date. It projects that it will sell 26 million more Wiis in its next fiscal year and 30 million more DS’s. The latter will be driven by sales of the new DSi. And, of course, there are several huge games in the pipeline, including a new “Zelda” for the DS and “Wii Sports Resort.”

By the way, I still haven’t tried the DSi, and it’s unlikely that I will. Nintendo refused to send an evaluation unit. Maybe that’s how it’s padding the bottom line these days.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 9:28 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.