Nintendo reported its financial results for the first half of the fiscal '98/'99 year Tuesday, announcing lower sales and operating profits. With Zelda 64 just days from release, though, the company has high hopes for the future. Nintendo is currently focusing its promotion and marketing efforts on Zelda both in Japan and the US.

　　The company announced that it shipped 360,000 N64 units in Japan during this period - a paltry amount when you consider that it shipped 3.29 million units in overseas markets (most of which likely were sold in the US, although Nintendo did not split up US numbers from its worldwide figures). It expects N64 shipments to rise to 1.5 million units for Japan and 7.5 million units overseas for the full fiscal year.

　　Game Boy shipments for the year are estimated at 4.5 million in Japan and 8 million overseas.

　　Nintendo reported that as of September 30, it had sold 69.56 million units of Game Boy hardware (20.07 million in Japan, 49.49 million overseas) and 19.78 million units of Nintendo 64 hardware (3.5 million in Japan, 16.28 million overseas).

　　Parent operating profit dipped to 45.75 billion yen (US$382.31 million) compared to a profit of 48.24 billion yen ($403.11 million) for the same period a year ago. However, Nintendo's first-half parent current profit was boosted by the weak yen-to-dollar rate, up 28.5 percent to 63 billion yen ($526.45 million).

　　Nintendo predicts a 6.5 percent rise in sales to 460 billion yen ($3.8 billion) and a 2.9 percent rise in the parent company's current profit to 129 billion yen ($1.07 billion) for the full fiscal year.