Nintendo will not cut the prices of its Wii console and DS handheld players this year.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told an analyst meeting the outfit does not need to cut the price of its hardware. Nintendo holds the number one slot for consoles, doubled its operating profit and forecast a further 9 per cent gain this year, to US$5.08 billion this year.

While this figure fell short of market expectations analysts said the company forecast is believed to be on the conservative side. Nintendo, Japan's third-largest company in market value, revised upward its earnings outlook three times in the year just ended.

In comparison, Sony slashed the price of its PlayStation 3 with a 20-gigabyte hard drive by 20 per cent before the product launch in late 2006, and lowered it further last year to spur demand, while Nintendo has kept the Wii price unchanged since its launch.