Officials from Nintendo have announced the company's consolidated first quarter financial results for the three months ended June 30th. All figures showed a substantial increase, with full year net income projections being raised by 40 percent.

During the three month period net sales increase by 160 percent on the previous year to ¥340.4 billion ($2.83bn). Operating income rose by 215 percent to ¥90.6 billion ($752m) and net income rose by as much as 416 percent to ¥80.3 billion ($666m).

As a result of continued strong demand for both the Nintendo DS and Wii, the company has increased full year shipment projections from 14 million to 16.5 million units for the Wii console and from 55 million to 72 million for Wii software.

Forecasts for Nintendo DS console shipments have risen from 22 million to 26 million units, with software sales predictions rising from 130 million to 140 million. In both cases, hardware and software results for past periods are included as separate pieces, but future bundles are counted as hardware only.

The company puts the total worldwide sales of the Wii hardware so far at 9.27 million at the end of June, with 3.43 million units sold in Nintendo’s first quarter despite continued supply constraints. Broken down by region the Wii has so far sold 2.95 million units in Japan, as of the end of June, 3.81 million units in the Americas and 2.51 million units in the rest of the world.

Both Super Paper Mario and Mario Party 8 are reported to have sold over 1 million units so far, despite the former not having been released yet in Europe and the latter fully released so far only in North America, following its recall in the UK.

The Nintendo DS sold 6.98 million units worldwide during the company’s first quarter, giving a new worldwide total for the format of 47.27 million. Sales are broken down by region to 18.11 million in Japan, 14.14 million in the Americas and 15.03 million in the rest of the world.

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl proved the best selling title during the first quarter, with 3.55 million units sold for a global total to date of 8.76 million – with the European launch not due until July 27th, 2007.

As a result of the continued strong demand for both systems, the company’s full year financial forecasts have been increased, with net sales forecasts up 23 percent to ¥1.40 trillion ($11.62bn). Operating income forecasts have been increased 37 percent to ¥370 billion ($3.07bn) and net income expectation have been raised by 40 percent to ¥245 billion ($2.03bn).