The production of the Nintendo Wii U will be coming to an end in Japan. This is after years of pitiful sales performance, the company's game console just didn't catch on to gamers and fans making it a huge flop.
According to Kotaku, the announcement came from Nintendo's official Japanese website. There's a text below the product picture of the Wii that translates to "Production is scheduled to end soon within Japan."
Nintendo America said that they can confirm that "all Wii U hardware that will be made available in the North American market for this fiscal year has already been shipped" to their retail partners. People "who wants Wii U to communicate with their preferred retail outlet to monitor availability."
Prior to the announcement, there have already been rumors that the Wii U will be coming to an end, though Nintendo has been denying that rumor. A spokesperson for Nintendo denied those rumors saying that even with the Nintendo Switch is "slated to go on sale", the production of the Wii U "is scheduled to continue."
Business Insider reports that the Wii U has been a huge flop, selling only more than 13 million units since it was introduced in 2012. In contrast, the original Wii sold 84 million units in four years.
The company has been posting losses for the past three years but is now regrouping and making a big bet on the Nintendo Switch. The Wii U was a huge flop because it didn't catch on to a lot of gamers and there are several reasons for that.
One of the reasons the Wii U was a huge flop was that developers had a hard time creating games that take full advantage of the touchscreen tablet controller. The game console is also only slightly powerful than the original Wii, making games with cutting-edge graphics have a hard time finding their way to the Wii U.
This means most of the popular games in the Wii U comes from Nintendo itself. A lot of people also confused the console as an accessory or add-on to the original Wii.
Despite the huge flop of the Wii U, it was still a great console that has great games like the "Super Smash Bros." and the stellar racing title "Mario Kart 8". There's also at least one more popular game coming out of the Wii U, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", so there may still be a reason to purchase the console.
