"High-end" games drive profit growth for Nvidia

Nvidia attributed its climbing profits to the emergence of high-end games like Battlefield 3.

For the quarter ending October 31, the company posted revenue of $1.06 billion, up $843.9 million from the same quarter last year. Net profits were $178.3 million, more than double the previous year's total of $84.9 million.

The majority of the company's revenue - $644.8 million - was generated by its GPU business. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang credited the company's strong financial performance the growing disparity between console and PC performance.

In an investor call, Huang noted the, "increased demand for our high-end products as consumers geared-up their PCs for new titles such as Battlefield 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Star Wars: The Old Republic."

"This happens every major game console cycle towards the second half of its product life, because PC technology advances on a regular basis instead of once every 7 to 10 years."

"And so you could imagine how PC technology is dramatically better than a game console today, and you're starting to see that now with a new generation of games that are coming out, such as Battlefield 3."

Huang also predicted future success in the emerging "superphone" segment, aided by the recent unveiling of Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor. He described the trend of consumers "buying up" to more advanced hardware after an entry-level purchase in the mobile and PC sectors.

"We see the same thing in the superphones segment," he added. "And this is likely to be quite a good growth segment for us. We have more design wins in Tegra 3 today than we had at Tegra 2. We have more design wins, more devices, more OEMs."