Wii and DS drive Nintendo profits

Nintendo has raised the sales forecast of the Wii

Profits at video games giant Nintendo have soared, boosted by booming sales of the Wii games machine.

Nintendo reported a third-quarter net profit of 126.5bn yen ($1.18bn, £604m), up 63% on last year.

Nintendo's Wii outsold rival machines from Microsoft and Sony in 2007 and the company raised its sales foreast for the current financial year.

Nintendo's biggest hit is the hand-held DS machine, which was last year's best selling games system.

Hit products

The company also raised its annual sales forecast for the DS to 29.5m units.

To meet demand, Nintendo twice raised production of the Wii last year, but shops still sold out over the holiday period.

It expects to sell 18.5 million machines in the current financial year.

But analysts are already wondering if the company has other hit products in the pipeline.