CHIBA, Japan—Nintendo Co., the latest victim of the strengthening yen, slashed its earnings forecasts Wednesday after announcing that its highly anticipated 3-D hand-held videogame system will miss the year-end holiday shopping season.

Nintendo said it will launch the 3DS, which will play 3-D games without the need for special glasses, in February. The company had previously said it planned to launch the successor to its DS portable game system by the end of March 2011. But many in the industry speculated the company would roll out the 3DS this year amid slowing DS and Wii home console sales.
Shortly after announcing plans at a company event to introduce the 3DS on Feb. 26 in Japan, ahead of a March debut in the U.S. and Europe, Nintendo issued a separate statement cutting its fiscal full-year profit outlook by more than half, due in part to the strong yen and the release schedule of the 3DS.
The yen's strength this year has clouded the outlook for Japan's export-driven economy. The Bank of Japan's latest tankan survey of business sentiment released Wednesday showed that big manufacturers remained optimistic for the July-September period, but were much more guarded for the next quarter due the surging yen and uncertainty about the global economy.
The lower earnings outlook from one of the stars of Japan's corporate sector comes as Japanese electronics companies seek a recovery in earnings after wallowing in losses for most of the last two years. Nintendo posted five straight years of net profit growth before earnings slipped in the last fiscal year.
It now projects an even steeper profit decline for the current fiscal year.