Tech Digest: Nintendo cedes No. 2 spot to Microsoft

Tech Digest: Nintendo cedes No. 2 spot to Microsoft "Nintendo Co. says full-year profit fell by about 38 percent and sales of its GameCube console lagged forecasts by about half, handing Microsoft Corp. the title of the world's No. 2 maker of video-game machines.
Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo, until this year second only to Sony Corp. in console sales, said it sold about 5.6 million GameCubes in the fiscal year ended March 31, 44 percent short of its 10 million unit goal. Microsoft expects to sell 9 million of its Xbox game machines in the fiscal year ending June 30.
The weaker-than-expected GameCube sales at Nintendo, the North American headquarters of which is in Redmond, may increase pressure on the company to follow in the path of rival Sega Corp., which scrapped its Dreamcast game console when sales flopped. The poor sales may also force software designers to abandon the machine in favor of Sony's PlayStation 2 or Microsoft's Xbox."