At a press briefing on Friday, Satoru Iwata gave a financial briefing to a room full of investors; at the same time, Nintendo’s press site released a PDF of the numbers. Here are some highlights from the report:

• Sales were up 73% from last year, to 1,672.4 billion yen ($16 billion USD); profits were up 47.7% to 257.3 billion yen ($2.46 billion USD).
• The DS moved 30.31 million units of hardware and 185.62 million units of software; the Wii moved 18.61 million consoles and 119.6 million games.
• Hardware and software shipment exceeded Nintendo’s forecast; most significantly, more DS units were sold this year than any other one Nintendo system in any previous year.
• Iwata addressed concerns that the DS’s momentum was slowing down; while sales are slowing in Japan, the DS is handily defeating the competition in the U.S. and Europe. Nintendogs and Brain Age are still selling quite strong in at least two territories.
• The Wii is the fastest-selling home console in all five major territories (U.S., Japan, U.K., France and Germany).
• 15 DS games sold a million copies on DS this year, and 12 Wii games did the same. To date, there have been 43 million-selling titles on both systems.
• In the U.S. and Europe, over half of DS and Wii game sales are third-party titles; in Japan, however, the vast majority of Wii titles are first-party.
• In the U.S. and Europe, over 50% of WiiWare developers have less than 20 employees, and 39% are new developers. Iwata noted a U.S. WiiWare game called World of Goo, which is being developed by a grand total of three people.
• Nintendo has successfully expanded the gaming audience, and has also demonstrated that games can have long-term selling power. They have also made handheld systems much more popular.
• In Japan, the DS and Wii have the most users per household (3 and 3.5 respectively); in the U.S., the top three systems in this regard are Wii, PS2 and DS, in that order (2.9, 2.6 and 2.4).

In addition to this, Reuters released an article wherein Iwata stated that the prices of the Wii and the DS will not be cut, as such cuts do not appear to be necessary.

It’s hard to get surprised by such high numbers these days, but the number of million-selling games on each system is rather impressive. I also like hearing about how small developers are flocking to WiiWare.