Nintendo downgraded its annual sales forecast on Tuesday as net profit plunged 60 percent year-on-year in the first half, with fans awaiting the announcement of a new console.Last year, the Japanese video game giant scored with the smash-hit “Super Mario Bros” film and the release of “Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”, the fastest-selling game in nearly four decades of the Zelda franchise.But times are now tighter for the company, which has promised news on the successor to its popular but ageing Switch console by the end of March 2025.”Unit sales of both hardware and software were extremely high for the first half of the previous fiscal year,” Nintendo said, adding that the Mario movie had “energised our dedicated video game platform business”.”There were no such special factors in the first half of this fiscal year, and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly,” it added.In the April-September period, Nintendo logged net profit of 108.7 billion yen ($710 million), down 60 percent from the same period a year earlier.The Kyoto-based company kept unchanged its downbeat full-year net profit forecast of 300 billion yen — a drop of nearly 40 percent from the 490 billion yen in 2023-24.It now expects sales of 1.28 trillion yen, down from the previous estimate of 1.35 trillion yen, and also issued a less optimistic operating profit forecast.The Switch, both a handheld and TV-compatible device, became a must-have distraction among all age groups during the Covid pandemic, but buzz around the console is fading.”Unit sales for the entire Nintendo Switch family of systems decreased 31 percent year-on-year to 4.72 million units” in the first half, Nintendo said on Tuesday.Software unit sales were down nearly 28 percent on-year, it added.For now “the company is focused on increasing sales of the current Switch console in 2024, so a lot of news flow about the next console may happen in mid-January 2025 and later”, Takeshi Koyama of Mizuho Securities said ahead of the results.For several years, Nintendo has been pursuing a strategy to reach a wider audience, analysts say.The company last month opened its first museum in a renovated factory in Kyoto, showcasing its long history since starting life in 1889 producing playing cards.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang said Tuesday he was “fully confident” the country would hit its economic goals this year, lauding recent stimulus measures and suggesting there was still room for more.China’s leaders have set an annual growth target of around five percent, but in the third quarter the country saw its slowest expansion in a year and a half as its post-pandemic recovery remained stubbornly uneven.The government has announced a raft of measures aimed at boosting activity, including rate cuts and the easing of some home purchasing restrictions, but analysts have criticised the lack of detail so far.  Observers hope a specific figure for the stimulus could emerge from this week’s meeting of the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress, the top body of China’s rubber stamp parliament. “We are fully confident in the realisation of this year’s goals and the development of China’s economy in the future,” Li said Tuesday at the opening ceremony of a major international trade show in Shanghai.Referring to the recent package of measures, Li, who has official responsibility for economic policy, said they had been “well-received”.”China’s major economic indicators have rebounded across the board, market confidence has increased significantly, social expectations have improved significantly, and there have been many positive changes in economic operation,” he said. An initial market rally when the measures were announced has since fizzled out, with investors put out by the lack of detail.But there have been glimmers of hope for the economy recently, including China’s manufacturing output expanding for the first time in six months in October.On Tuesday Li suggested that officials still had room to manouevre when it came to further measures. “In the face of downward economic pressure, we have the requirements for increasing counter-cyclical adjustments,” he said. “There is a relatively large space for financial and monetary policies, and the policy tools are even more abundant,” he added.