Nintendo's first-quarter financial results for 2007 were distributed earlier today in a press release, confirming what every man and his Pokémon already knows: that Nintendo is ridiculously, hideously, nauseatingly rich.

But how, exactly?

Well, it’s no secret that the DS and DS Lite have been madly popular in virtually every region. The little handheld - which was heartily mocked by certain commentators in some corners of the internet when first revealed - has now sold 47.27 million unit sales worldwide. This Christmas, Nintendo expects the dual-screened portable to become only the sixth console to pass the 50 million sales mark, following in the footsteps of the PlayStation 2, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy and NES. The company has raised its shipment forecasts for the DS from 22 million to 26 million for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008.

It’s not just the portable market that the House of Mario is dominating. The Wii has so far marked a major turnaround for Nintendo’s fortunes when it comes to home consoles, and today the company also announced that worldwide sales of the motion-sensing console reached 9.27 million units at the end of June 2007. As with the DS, the firm’s shipping forecasts for the Wii have risen, from 14 million to 16.5 million for the fiscal year.

Yet perhaps the most imposing statistic to be found in this tangled clutter of figures is that Nintendo’s net profits more than quadrupled during the first-quarter of 2007, with an astounding 416 percent rise on the same period last year. Wowsers.