Nintendo marks the Wii U as end of life

Nintendo marks the Wii U as end of life

Nintendo marks the Wii U as end of life

 
Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo America has revealed that Nintendo has no plans to release any more games for the Wii U after Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild releases on Wii U and Nintendo Switch on March 3rd.  
 
This marks an official end of life for the Wii U, which was undeniably an unsuccessful console, failing to gain the mass market appeal of the original Wii and failing to sell more than 15 million units. Nintendo will continue to support the Wii U’s online services, though no more first party titles will be releasing for the console.     
 

While the Wii U did have a great lineup of first party titles, the console failed to gain any traction amongst third-party developers and presented some very confusing marketing early in the console’s lifecycle. This proved fatal for the console in the long term, as many consumers though that the Wii U was an accessory for the original Wii, rather than a whole new gaming console.   

 

Nintendo marks the Wii U as end of life

 

While the Wii U did provide more powerful hardware than both the PS3 and Xbox 360 at launch, it failed to compete with the incoming PS4 and Xbox One in terms of hardware, leaving it in a position where it was not worthwhile for developers to create games for it. 

A combination of sub-par sales at launch and relatively low performance compared to the PS4 and Xbox One is what ultimately killed the console, as third parties did not want to hold back their games for such a small potential playerbase and gamers did not want to buy the console due to the system’s lack of 3rd party releases. 

Now, the Wii U is effectively end of life hardware, having sold 13 million units be September 2016, making it the worst selling home console that Nintendo has ever released. 

 

You can join the discussion on Nintendo’s Wii U console on the OC3D Forums. 

 Â