The squeaky-voiced Italian plumber with a penchant for mushrooms beats sex and violence – at least on the little screen. Mario, who appears in scores of Nintendo games, has helped the Japanese gaming company to another profitable quarter. Making any money in gadgetry is no mean feat these days. On Thursday, as Nintendo unveiled operating profits of $2.8bn for the quarter to December, Sony revealed a group loss of $200m, while Toshiba, the electronics and engineering group, lost $1.8bn.

Nintendo, of course, is classic recessionary fare: a night banging virtual drums is cheaper than a night on the tiles. But the same theory did little for Sony’s gaming division, which managed an operating profit of just $4m. Nintendo’s cheaper consoles and handheld devices are more popular: its Wii machine outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 by 2½ times in the last nine months of 2008.