Japanese gaming giant Nintendo has posted a record group profit for the six months through September mainly due to a weaker yen.

The company says net income jumped 34 percent to over 230 billion yen, or nearly 1.6 billion dollars. That is the highest ever for the first half of the company's business year.

Sales topped 650 billion yen, or about 4.5 billion dollars in the period. That is up 5.2 percent in yen terms from a year earlier.

Besides the weaker yen, brisk sales of new software for Nintendo's flagship Switch console contributed to the record bottom line.

But the company downgraded its forecast for Switch sales for the full year to 19 million units because of disruption to production caused by shortages of chips and other components. That is 2 million units fewer than the projection as of May.

The company expects to book the equivalent of more than 2.7 billion dollars in full-year net profit as a result of the yen's continued weakness. That would be an increase of over 410 million dollars from its May forecast.

Nintendo says it will front-load production and select appropriate means of transportation in the run-up to the holiday season to deliver as many consoles as possible to consumers worldwide.