July 29^th, 2005 (4:42pm) - Nintendo has reported that the company has seen a 78.5 percent drop in its operating profit for the June quarter compared to the previous year. The company’s operating income came out to 13.72 billion Yen, down 3.75 billion Yen off last year’s figure, on sales of 70.7 billion Yen - down 14 per cent over sales in the same quarter last year.

During the quarter, Nintendo only shipped 0.98 million Game Boy Advance units and 260,000 units of the GameCube. These shipping numbers are a major drop from the previous year, which saw Nintendo shipping 2.3 million GBAs. The GameCube numbers are blamed on the lack of major releases from Nintendo for the platform.

However, due to the success of the Nintendo DS, Nintendo still made a profit this quarter, as always. Approx. 1.4 million games were sold for the platform during this period alone and it seems as if Nintendo is well on its way to selling 12.4 million DS worldwide during the fiscal year.

Nintendo’s quarterly profits are expected to increase significantly later this year with a number of key software releases, including the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Fire Emblem, New Super Mario Bros., Nintendogs, Mario Kart DS, Jump Super Stars, amongst many other titles.