OSAKA -- Nintendo is expected to report a 160% year-on-year increase in group net profit to around 30 billion yen ($289 million) for the April-September fiscal half thanks to the sale of a stake in the Seattle Mariners professional baseball team.

The profit surge came even as the strong yen led to foreign currency losses of roughly 40 billion yen.

The smash hit "Pokemon Go" smartphone game, developed jointly by affiliate Pokemon Co. and U.S. startup Niantic, apparently helped shore up Nintendo's bottom line.

Nintendo said in August that it would sell most of its stake in the operator of the Seattle Mariners for $661 million, an amount nearly 10 times what the Kyoto-based company paid when it acquired the stake from former President Hiroshi Yamauchi in 2004. 

Nintendo has seen few hit game titles for its Wii U console this fiscal year. Group sales likely dropped 30% to about 150 billion yen for the first half. The company booked an operating profit of 8.9 billion yen in the April-September period of 2015 but will likely report a loss of about 5 billion yen for the just-ended half.

(Nikkei)

http://asia.nikkei.com/Japan-Update/Nintendo-profit-seen-surging-160-on-sale-of-Mariners-stake?                               

I guess this will hide the incredibly slow first half fiscal year where they barely had any notable releases and record lows in terms of sales. 

Wow, they did a very good deal with the Marines team. I hope that money goes to either advertising the Switch or making games for it. The downside is that I expect a significant drop for the next fiscal reunion (is it before or after the Switch's release?).

I like this

Good to see some black numbers again for them, with the ridiculous reserves they had from the Wii/DS era though, there was never any real danger.

this won't solve problem long term.

better to own a sports team then 1 year profits.

They are expanding to other business like movies and orlando parks, even restaurants. They still own a small part of the team but is not like the team was a money maker for them.

Doomed since 1889. They should have kept the Mariners though, for an even rainier day. But still, it was a great investment for them to buy it all those years ago and now it's giving back to them.

But it could have been. TV deals for sports teams go into the billions now. Sure the investment in the team has paid for itself many times over, but they still could have made more money in the long run by owning the team.

289 million is very nice.

Well, that certainly helped their bottom line.

In before, if this was Sony there would be things like the complainings about building being sold.