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Nintendo May Kill the Wii U by End of Year

Posted by Matt Birchler
— 1 min read

Japanese newspaper, Nikkei just reported that Nintendo will cease production of their Wii U by the end of 2016. I predicted last July that Nintendo would kill the Wii U this year:

All signs point to Nintendo trying to rush the Wii U out the door to make room for their new home console. It would appear that Nintendo has finally come to terms with the fact that the Wii U is a failure and is serious about moving on to the next phase. I expect more explicit teases from Nintendo before the end of the year, and we may see some hardware/software really early in 2016.

Now we're still (barely) in early 2016, and this is the first peep we're heard from Nintendo, even if it wasn't quite an official press release. Now I'm guessing we won't hear anything from them until E3 in June.

I know the Wii U isn't selling well, but you don't completely end production of your only game console if there's nothing ready to take its place. It would be like Apple taking a few months off from making iPhones because they have a new one coming out "soon." Sounds crazy, right? If Nintendo's plan is to stop making Wii U's by December 31, 2016, you'd better believe their NX will be on store shelves before then.

This whole thing sounds strange though. The PS4 was released in November 2013 and Sony still produces PS3's (and sold about 10,000 units last week alone) and the same goes for Microsoft with the Xbox 360 and even Nintendo themselves with the Wii. That fact alone makes me a little skeptical of the entire idea, but maybe I was right last July and Nintendo has indeed recognized the failure of the Wii U and are putting it out to pasture.

UPDATE: Nintendo denies the claim.