A 23 percent fall in the April-December period profit was reported on Thursday by the world’s leading gaming console maker, Nintendo Wii. The drop in the profit figures largely resulted from the weak software sales for its DS handheld game player, strong yen, and the Wii price-cut.

In line with its projections of the first annual profit decline in four years, Nintendo’s group net income during the April-December period plunged 9.4 percent to 192.60 billion yen, as against the 212.52 billion yen profit during the same period the earlier year.

While the company’s revenue tumbled to 1.182 trillion yen; its operating profit dropped to 296.66 billion yen – marking a 41 percent fall.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has maintained its current projections for its fiscal year ending March 31 – expecting its revenue to be around 1.5 trillion yen, and its net profit to be nearly 230 billion yen.

In addition, Nintendo has also maintained its earlier projections pertaining to the yearly sales of its popular Wii console – the best-selling console of this generation, surpassing rivals Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 3. It is looking at a sale of nearly 20.0 million units of the Wii for the year.

Also unchanged is the forecast for the sales of the Nintendo DS hand-held console at 30.0 million units; as well as a 150 million units’ sale of the DS software title.