Investors in Japan have been keeping a close eye on Nintendo's financial growth and have decided to cut down the company's stock ratings. This is due to the slowly flagging growth the company has been showing ever since its peaked growth during the past fiscal year. You can check out the financial details of this decision by reading our full article.

Osaka-based publisher Capcom has released its financial report card for 2007's third fiscal quarter. While a lot of people expected a surge in correlation with the holiday rush, what we saw was a mixed bag at best. Devil May Cry 4 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC) and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles enjoyed good sales, but other titles weren't so lucky. Full details after the jump.

It's no secret that Nintendo has been making a lot of money over the last few months. At this point, most people would probably expect that the company's stocks would be as good as gold. According to Bloomberg Japan, however, this isn't the case. The video game company's stock dropped by 5.9 percent and ended at an all time seven-month low. Head on over to the full article for more on this.

Nintendo has posted its first quarter profits revealing that their gains have increased fivefold. This new record has prompted the said company to raise its earnings forecast. This should come as no surprise considering that both the Nintendo DS and the Wii have been outselling any and all competitors in the console and handheld market.

The net income of Nintendo has climbed to 80.3 billion yen (about US$ 668 million) within a three-month span (ended on June 30). At this point last year, the company was brandishing just 15.6 billion yen.

This news was noted by stock traders as the company's shares rose as much as 0.9 percent after the earnings announcement, but fell 0.2% to 54,800 yen as of 2:33 p.m. in Osaka.

Nintendo is confident that this trend will continue with the company raising its full-year net income forecast to 245 billion yen. That's a full 41% more than its April projection with expected sales hitting 1.4 trillion yen.

This meteoric rise did not go unnoticed by analysts, and Daniel Ernst from Soleil Securities Corp noted quite a few things regarding the company saying that "Nintendo continues to knock the cover off the ball in the video-game market. Nintendo not only creates great hardware that is low-cost to make and easy to play, but also great software."

Even in our parents' generation, Nintendo was already wowing people with ingenious inventions and toys that captured the hearts of children and parents alike. This documentary features the Nintendo Museum in Osaka's Hankyu Department store and showcased privately-owned Nintendo merchandise, most of which were decades old.

The documentary shows toys that were already unusual in its time: an Electronic Love Tester, an extending arm used to play pranks on other people, a lion's head for shooting practice, a "Light Telephone" (how it works is still beyond us), and some normal looking items such as playing cards.

Nintendo Company Ltd.'s video game history was also brought into attention. It turned out that it had the Nintendo Disk System (NDS) exclusively for the Japanese NES, Nintendo's 8-bit console. Basically, the NDS is a NES peripheral that plays NES games stored in floppy disks. Once a person cleared or finished the game, all he had to do was to bring the floppy disk to a toy store equipped with an NDS disk writer so he could get a new game for only 500 yen.

The NDS rocked the most, not because it let people use and reuse floppy disks for different games, nor because it let people purchase games for a mere pittance; but because the NDS game writer played a tune whenever it wrote games into a floppy. We would love to own a singing DVD writer, ourselves.

There are lots of things to discover about Nintendo in this video, so watch the whole clip and find yourselves walking down Memory Lane.

A Bloomberg report revealed that electronic entertainment giant Nintendo has pushed its stock to an all-time high with a stellar market performance coming from the DS Lite and Wii.

Both the Wii and the DS are the hottest-selling products of their kind, driving Nintendo's earnings to ¥966 billion, which is equivalent to roughly US$ 8.1 billion in the first quarter alone, giving them a net profit to the tune of US$ 1 billion. Nintendo shares now cost ¥37,450 or about US$ 313.32.

Analysts say that one of the factors which made the Nintendo figures higher is the fact that the yen is weakening against the dollar and the Euro at this point. That essentially raises the Japanese currency figures because of the markdown in the value.

"The stock's rally reflects investors' positive sentiment about Nintendo's earnings. The yen's exchange rate has a big impact on the company's net income," says analyst Junichi Misawa.

The recent developments have compelled Nintendo to raise its financial forecasts higher in the next three quarters. If the market trend goes on, Nintendo is likely to post a new record high on market performance since it was registered in Osaka in 1962.

Nintendo shares took a big hit recently, posting its biggest decline in three weeks according to Bloomberg. This decline happened after Nintendo announced that Japan's government will sell its stake, which is about 1.4% of the outstanding stock.

"The news suggest a worsening of share supply and demand, and comes at the time of concern that the stock's price is high,'" said Yoku Ihara, head of equity research at Retela Crea Securities Co. in Tokyo.

Bloomberg reports that the stock fell 2.7 percent to 32,950 yen on the Osaka Securities Exchange today. The 1.987 million shares held by the government will be priced between March 5 and March 8, Nintendo said on Feb. 23. The stake is valued at 67.3 billion yen (US$ 557 million) as of Friday.

According to Nintendo spokesman Ken Toyoda, the company initiated the sale by approaching The Banks' Shareholdings Purchase Corp., a government-controlled body. Nintendo is currently looking to increase the number of individual shareholders in order to increase liquidity.

Capcom may be putting a Wii-fied Okami rumor to sleep, and Clover Studio will soon be closing up shop, but don't think that this will be the end of the team that has brought us the likes of Viewtiful Joe. On the contrary, this may just be the beginning.

Much like how nature has cycles of life and death, the wilted clover slowly comes into our sight again in the form of the SEEDS development house that is taking root on the web. Their website does not carry any ongoing development news at the moment, but it is recruiting members to their ranks.

What does strike us is the current roster working at this new studio: Directors Hideki Kamiya (Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Okami) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and RE4) are noted to be involved on SEEDS' roster, as are Nao Ueda, Mari Shimazaki, and Masami Ueda - all of whom were also part of the development crew for Okami. This studio also takes root in Osaka (Clover Studio's home base), and will be under the command of former Clover president Atsushi Inaba.

And in case you're wondering, they're now hiring planners, programmers, designers, sound people, and promotional staff. Must love dogs.

What happens when you think happy thoughts? If you're Peter Pan, you fly, but if you're Nintendo, your stocks go up.

At the 3 p.m. close of the Osaka Securities Exchange, Nintendo's shares were the highest in a month at ¥24,640 ($210 US). This may have been a result of the company's raising of their profit forecast by 20 percent, in addition to other factors. Most notable of these would have been the popularity of the DS handheld and the arrival of the Nintendogs franchise. A weakening yen may have also played a part, as increased sales in other countries translate into more yen when it's down.

While it doesn't say anything about the potential success of the Wii, such optimism does also lead to healthier competition when Nintendo's console and Sony's PS3 come out later in the year. Let's just hope Nintendo keeps it that way, eh?