Nintendo has cut the forecast for Switch sales for its fiscal year ending March 2025 as demand wanes for its seven-year-old console.

The company now expects to sell 12.5 million units of the Switch over the course of the rest of its fiscal year, down from a previous forecast of 13.5 million units.

It has previously said that it will announce the Switch’s successor within its current fiscal year.

Nintendo’s latest financial results for the six months ended September 30 show further declines in both hardware and software sales.

For the first half of its fiscal year, it reported a 34 per cent decrease in net sales, 31 per cent drop in hardware, and 27.6 per cent fall in software. As a result, Nintendo has lowered its full-year expectations.

The company previously expected net sales to reach ¥1.35 trillion (approx. A$13.43 billion), but now estimates ¥1.28 trillion (approx. A$12.68 billion) – down 5 per cent on the initial forecast, and also lower by 23 per cent compared to the previous financial year.

 

For the September quarter, Nintendo’s net profit fell 69 per cent year-on-year to ¥27.7 billion (approx. A$280 million), and revenue dropped 17 per cent year-on-year to ¥276.7 billion Japanese (approx. A$2.72 billion).

Sales of the Switch totalled 4.72 million units in the six months ended September 30, compared with 6.84 million units in the same period of last year. It is the company’s second best-selling console in its history, behind the Nintendo DS.

 

Its Switch sales received a boost over the last few months due to last year’s release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game and the Super Mario Bros. Movie. But that hype hasn’t carried over to the first half of this fiscal year, with Nintendo adding, “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 year-on-year.”

Nintendo has attempted to license out its intellectual property for use from movies to theme parks. A new Super Mario movie is slated for release in 2026 too, but the bigger announcement that Nintendo fans will be watching closely remains that of the Switch successor.