(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are their own.)

HONG KONG - Nintendo could use a booster pack. The $68 billion Japanese console-maker said on Thursday that operating profit for its first quarter to the end of June fell 17%, missing estimates. It’s a stark contrast to the stronger performance of rival Sony 

There are signs of customer fatigue: Overall unit sales of the Switch fell 22% to about 4.5 million units, and players purchased fewer games. Excitement is starting to fade around hits like “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”, which slumped from the more than 10 million copies sold in the first quarter of the previous fiscal year.

Nintendo maintained its forecast for a 22% drop in operating profit for this fiscal year. Buying back some 1.5% of its shares is probably too small to meaningfully prop up its flagging valuation of 15 times forward net profit. But the company will need to look beyond games and start extracting more value from its intellectual property to catch up with rivals. (By Sharon Lam)

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are their own.)

(Editing by Una Galani and Katrina Hamlin) ((SIGN UP FOR BREAKINGVIEWS EMAIL ALERTS: http://bit.ly/BVsubscribe))