Nintendo of Japan announced its first quarter results Wednesday, showing increased sales and income versus the same period the year before.

For the quarter ending June 30, 2008, Nintendo recorded sales of 423,380M yen (about US $3.9 billion) and an operating income of 119,192M yen (about US$1.1 billion). The company’s net income for the quarter was 107,267M yen (US$994 million). In the same period in 2007, the company reported net sales of 340,439M yen, an operating income of 90,361M yen, and a net income of 80,251M yen.

Of that 423,380M yen in sales, 262,206M yen or about 61.9% came from hardware sales. Software made up 160,429M yen or about 37.9%, while “playing cards, karuta, etc.” sold to about 743M yen to make up the 0.2% difference.

Nintendo mentioned in the statement that its consolidated earnings forecast for the 2009 fiscal year was unchanged from previous announcements.

In the financial statement the company also released complete sales stats for all of its hardware platforms, both in terms of the quarter and the console’s life. Wii hardware sales were shown as cooling in Japan in the 2008 quarter, moving 530,000 units compared to 950,000 the previous year. Significant growth in the US and other regions, however—the US moved 2,500,000 and other regions moved 2,150,000, up from 1.44 million and 1.04 million respectively—ensured that Wii hardware sales grew on a worldwide scale. Nintendo sold 5.17 million Wiis in the quarter, up 3.43 million the year before.

DS sales, on the other hand, were down versus the same period last year. This was due to a significant contraction in Japanese DS sales—only 580,000 were sold, compared to 2.08 million the year before. Growth in the US (from 2.39 million to 2.71 million) and other regions (from 2.5 million to 3.65 million) could not entirely offset this decrease. 6.94 million DS units sold in the April to June 2008 period, compared to 6.98 million in the same period last year.

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