Nintendo today released their financials for the quarter ending September, and for the most part the show profit and sales drops by around half compared to last year. Different causes are pointed out by different sources including Nintendo themselves.

Nintendo's net profit for the quarter between April and September 2009 show a drop of 52 percent compared to the same quarter in 2008. That's from 144.83 billion yen ($1.59 billion) down to 69.49 billion yen ($761 million).

Although year-over-year DS hardware sales only fell slightly, Wii sales took a sharp drop. Worldwide year-over-year DS sales for the quarter went down by 14 percent from 13.7 million units to 11.7 million. Wii sales sunk by 43 percent from 10.1 million to 5.7 million units.

The reasons for these falling numbers differ with the sources. A lot of outlets like the New York Times are attributing this to a saturated market. Nintendo itself attributes their falling profits to appreciation of the yen and falling unit sales to a lack of big budget titles in this year's lineup compared to last year.

For those interested in how much each Nintendo machine has sold for all time so far, DS worldwide life-to-date sales are now at 113.5 million units and Wii sales are at 56.14 million.