OSAKA (Kyodo) -- Nintendo Co. on Tuesday lowered its operating profit forecast for the year ending March next year to 360 billion yen ($2.4 billion) from its earlier projection of 400 billion yen amid weaker sales of its Switch consoles.

Sales are now forecast at 1.28 trillion yen compared to the previous estimate of 1.35 trillion yen, the Japanese gaming company said. Nintendo maintained its full-year net profit forecast at 300 billion yen.

The company lowered its Switch sales outlook for the fiscal year to 12.50 million units from 13.50 million.

Sales volume of the console, launched in 2017, marked a 31.0 percent fall to 4.72 million units in the first half ended September, while software sales declined 27.6 percent to 70.28 million copies.

Nintendo has said it will announce the successor to Switch by the end of March.

For the April-September period, net profit dropped 59.9 percent from a year earlier to 108.7 billion yen on sales of 523.3 billion yen, down 34.3 percent. Operating profit also fell 56.6 percent to 121.5 billion yen.

The lackluster results came in reaction to an unusual boost in the same period last year, helped by the smash-hit game "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" and the success of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie."

In the first half, Nintendo also enjoyed brisk sales of some new titles, such as "The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom" and "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door," but they were not strong enough to reverse the declining trend in console sales, the company said.