Nintendo market value surpasses £42bn

Nintendo surpassed ¥10trn (£42bn) in market value on Monday, joining Toyota Motor and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group as one of the bluest of Japanese blue-chip stocks.

Toyota is the world's most valuable automaker, and Mitsubishi UFJ is Japan's largest bank.

Nintendo shares have soared more than fivefold over the past two years, driven by blistering demand for the DS handheld player and the Wii game console. Shares in the videogame maker rose almost five per cent to ¥70,800 (£278) early Monday on expectations that the DS and Wii will lead rival game gear in the coming year-end shopping season.

Although Nintendo's market capitalisation is still less than half that of Toyota's ¥23trn (£96bn), it is 80 per cent higher than that of rival Sony, whose total revenue is more than eight times as big as Nintendo's.

Kyoto-based Nintendo offers easy-to-play but innovative games to expand the game population beyond hard-core gamers, who are often young males, helping the Wii and DS outsell Sony's rival machines -- PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable.

Shares in Nintendo got a further boost after the company last week said it would start selling its new Wii Fit home fitness game in Japan on 1 December.

The new game, which features a pressure-sensing mat that looks like a bathroom scale, and lets users 'head' virtual soccer balls and experience ski jumping on a TV screen, is expected to be the next major sales driver for the Wii after initial demand was ignited by the popularity of Wii Sports software.

Nintendo, known for such game characters as Mario, Pokemon and Zelda, competes with Sony and Microsoft in the global videogame market.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.