April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co., the world's biggest maker of handheld game players, said it's developing 45 software titles for the Wii console, a device that helped drive profit sevenfold in the past quarter.

The company is also developing 79 games for the two-year-old DS portable player, President Satoru Iwata said at news conference in Tokyo today. The next batch of games will be introduced to the market at the end of ``summer,'' he said.

Nintendo yesterday posted a net income of 42.4 billion yen ($354 million) in the three months ended March 31, as sales almost tripled. The Wii console, equipped with a motion-sensor controller that can be swung like a bat or tennis racquet, is forecast to sell 14 million units this fiscal year, more than three times the number sold in the five months it was introduced, the Kyoto-based company said yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 27, 2007 00:58 EDT