Tokyo - Nintendo Co, the world's top maker of videogame consoles, on Thursday dropped its profit and sales forecasts for this fiscal year on falling sales of its Wii player.

It said it expected its net income in the year ending March 31 to fall to 230 billion yen (2.5 billion dollars), which would represent a 17.6-per-cent drop from the past financial year and the first decline in profit in six years.

The Kyoto-based firm said its annual sales were expected to fall 18.4 per cent to 1.5 trillion yen.

Its competitors slashed their prices amid the world economic crisis, cutting into Nintendo's sales. Sony Corp lowered the price worldwide of its PlayStation 3 in August while Microsoft Corp cut the cost of its Xbox 360 in the United States.

Nintendo followed suit a month ago in a bid to spur sales. Still, it reduced its annual sales estimates for the devices from 26 million units to 20 million.

For the first half of its fiscal year, Nintendo reported a 52-per-cent drop in its net income from the same period a year earlier to 96.5 billion yen.

Sales fell to 548 billion yen from 836.8 billion, it said. (dpa)