Respected Japanese newspaper Nikkei published a rumour this morning that the Wii U will soon be ceasing production to make way for the upcoming NX. Nintendo is now denying that report.
Nikkei reports Wii U production will apparently end before the year is out. The reasons Nikkei gives are a lack of popularity compared to the Wii and the notion that the console won’t be able to stage a comeback. Also, the paper notes that developing games for the Wii U was difficult for game studios due to the console’s particular nature.
The Wii U launched in November 2012 and has currently sold over 12 million consoles worldwide.
According to Nikkei, companies that make Wii U parts have already ceased production on some of the console’s components. Nikkei reports that development on new Wii U titles, however, will continue, and this seems to be a move to reduce the risk of excess Wii U inventory when the NX launches.
But Nintendo is denying the Nikkei article. A Nintendo spokesperson told Japanese site IT Media, “This isn’t an announcement from our company.” The spokesperson added, “From the next quarter and thereafter as well, production [of the Wii U] is scheduled to continue.”
While Nintendo is denying this latest Nikkei report, please remember that the paper has a good track record with Nintendo rumours.
Comments
31 responses to “Nintendo Denies It’s Ending Wii U Production Anytime Soon”
LOL! The next quarter and thereafter = before the end of the year. That’s not a denial!
Nintendo denies everything until it’s ready to speak, truth has no bearing on that.
But it’s looking pretty obvious at this point, the wii u is done. I’m just incredibly surprised that the nx is coming out within the year it’s announced. To have anything approaching a respectable launch line-up would require a serious period of covert game development by many studios including third parties.
Unless the nx is something really whacky and manages to sidestep the problem. Nintendo is shrewd enough to have good reason for holding back so hard.
They absolutely cannot afford to launch with a lineup like they did with the WiiU.
I had my money saved and set aside at launch but didn’t see any reason to plonk money down to play a lazy adaptation of the DS/Wii 2D Mario games. Less than four years later and they’ve given me reasons to think about it- but the console still doesn’t have a killer app.
Fingers crossed the canned Zelda WiiU a year ago and it’s going to be a proper, new-gen launch title.
Splatoon is goddamned amazing, by far the standout wii u game for me.
Ohhh! Good point.
Yes, this is probably THE killer app for the console. They’ve had heaps of great games that make the purchase worthy though. More critically acclaimed titles than the other consoles, that’s for sure.
Which is why I firmly believe the NX will NOT be launching this year. In fact I’m not even convinced it’s supposed to be a successor for the Wii U.
I don’t know much about the NX, but I’m pretty sure that the WiiU isn’t going to be a viable machine for much longer if it is still now.
I can’t see Nintendo showing anything new that isn’t one of their now-standard single year in development AA titles. They aren’t going to show the seeds of an amazing new Metroid, Mario or anything else from here on.
They’re going to have to release something new soon. It’ll probably be a hybrid of some sorts and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s essentially a portable WiiU, but I don’t think they can keep going on like they did in 2015 with a small handful of good-not-great 1st party titles and near-zero 3rd party support.
NX looks like a hand held to me, maybe they are giving more inhome features to it such as HDMI. If they plan to get most the processing power from cloud computing then it will be quite restricted to which regions can use it, even Australia would likely not be able to use the device.
Similar to how the Nintendo DS wasn’t meant to be the successor to the GameBoy Advance?
It’s GOOOOOOONE.
So uhhh…
N64: Brilliant Mario, two brilliant Zelda games, fantastic and innovative Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Goldeneye…. probably a received a dozen first party classics
GC: One brilliant Zelda game, a brilliant Metroid, it’s own Mario game… probably 4-5 other first party classics
Wii: Two brilliant (but similar) Mario games, a decent Zelda (or two), solid follow-up Metroid games….. passable iterations of Smash and Mario Kart
WiiU: A Mario Game adapted from a 3DS game…. A 2D level maker….. some Zelda remakes…..solid iterations in the Smash and Kart franchises….
Anyone spot the trend here?
The wii and wii u had quite a few great games, but the gc was a classic machine as just about everything made for it still holds up.
The 64 may have had slightly more hits, but they’ve all aged so horribly it’s unbearable.
You really think the N64 games have aged that badly?
I disagree with that, there’s a reason that Mario 64, OOT and now MM have all been re-released so successfully.
Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Mario Party, F-Zero….. none of these games have had any significantly change to the formula since the N64 days and they’re still Nintendo’s best games!
The HD remakes of Banjo Kazooie, Blast Corps and Perfect Dark on the 360/ Xbone are all great to play still too.
They’re hard to use on a newer TV, and the graphics aren’t great, but they all still play pretty well.
The Wii got two games I’d consider classics up there with Nintendo’s best efforts on the SNES/N64 and GC. I don’t think the WiiU got any at all.
Graphically, they have aged terribly. I remember being blown away by new games coming out. Now they look like rubbish, even more so on our bigger TV’s that we are all sporting now.
That’s well every old game.
It’s been 20 years.
Let’s put it this way; Nintendo 64 games look a lot closer to 2016 games than games from 1976 did when the N64 launched.
I also think the blurriness holds up better than the low resolution PS1/ Saturn games did even if they look “sharper”, although that’s a personal preference thing. I’ve played through Starfox 64, Mario Kart and Mario 64 on the Wii in the past few years and I think they’re still very solid.
I don’t think it is so much that they have aged badly but rather, Nintendo has not matured at all since those times. As you said, they have sold exceptionally well because they were and still some of the best games on, Nintendo’s platform which says more about the current line-up and not their old stuff.
Is it “cherry-picking a couple of good titles and hand-waving the rest”? 😛
If you’ve got time to put together a long list of great games that landed on the N64 and GC, I’ll give you a comprehensive list of good games on the Wii and a 5-liner on the WiiU.
I did miss Splatoon.
I could easily see my GCN and Wii lists being roughly the same size each other and quite large, while the N64 and Wii U lists would also be roughly the same size, but much smaller than the first pair.
They are not selling super fast. So are they just making them slowly? I would have thought they would have heaps on hand and could easily stop production now and have enough on hand to satisfy sales.
I think the idea would be to stop producing the Wii U around the same time the NX gets released (say christmas 2016 for arguments sake), then with that taking over most of the Wii U sales, there should be enough stock to last out for around the next year (with Wii U games still slowly coming out) as the sales slowly die off.
Doesn’t sound like much of a denial to me or they would’ve flat out said the’re commited to the Wii U through this year rather than just the next quarter.
Not much of a surprise really though, seems more and more likely that the NX is coming this year (or very early 2017) but Nintendo is hardly going to spoil the surprise until they’re ready for the hype overload – presumably at E3.
That doesn’t sound like a denial. It reads like an admission.
This is Nintendo we’re talking about. Not a company whose word you trust.
If comments like these are any indication, Nintendo’s brand is in the toilet with gamers moreso than the likes of EA, Capcom, Xbox and Molyneux combined.
Topics like console manufacturing used to be insightful and showed a keen awareness of the logistics of the industry, now however, it just goes to show how the culture can never truly escape the console wars of the playground.
Personally, I expect the usual trend of ‘oh hey that machine that came out years ago was actually really good!’ to probably happen in a short while. I think I read once that Anonymous claim to be legions of Sad Dreamcast True Believers or something.
What do you expect?
“We don’t have anything to announce right now, but what we can tell you is that our current product is dead and you shouldn’t buy one.”
That’s about as standard a practice as exists in business.
But of course.
I think the WiiU gets a bad rap.
It doesn’t get the big games from the other consoles, but it’s exclusives are really high quality.
-NSMBU may have been a repeat of 3 other games, but it looked fantastic being the first time it was in HD.
-Mario 3D World wasn’t the next 3D Mario adventure I was expecting, but it’s still one of the most fun games I’ve ever played.
-Captain Toad may have been a cheap spinoff, but dammit those puzzles were ingenious at times.
-Yoshi’s Wooly World and DKC:TF were stellar 2D platformers.
-Wind Waker HD brought one of my most favourite games into the modern era. Twilight Princess didn’t have the same effect, but the brief look at the new Zelda coming out looks like it’ll take the series in a new direction.
-Mario Maker could use some more options, but makes it so easy to pump out some classic Mario levels
-Lego City Undercover – loading times were awful, but the dialog was hilarious.
-Mario Kart 8 – yeah it’s more Mario Kart, but it’s the most polished version yet, and the DLC was real value for money.
Not to mention the handiness of offscreen play, I can sit next to the wife while she watches something on TV that doesn’t interest me, and quietly play a console game while still engaging in conversation.
As far as I’m concerned, Nintendo can stay on Special Teams and keep doing its own wacky thing. I know where to find the PS4 games when I want them.
At first you said it get a bad wrap; but then your descriptions of each game were objective enough to perfectly summarise all the issues with the system
I agree with your post, except I think it gets about the love that it deserves more or less. I’ve always been happy to buy Nintendo consoles knowing that they wouldn’t get as many “very good” games but a small handful of best-of-generation titles.
Apart from Splatoon, there’s nothing on the WiiU that’s really must play. Its either something you can get somewhere else (often the 3DS) or something you’ve largely done before (on previous Nintendo consoles), there’s nothing on there that blows away the experiences from previous generations or offers something new the way OOT, Metroid Prime or Mario Galaxy did.
Their role is definitely the Special Teams one, but I don’t think they made the cut this time out.
Only counting disc based retail.
Must play games;
Mariokart 8
Bayonetta 2
Splatoon
Smash 4
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Wonderful 101
Pokken
Hounorable mentions;
Donkeykong Country TP
Pikmin 3
New SMB / Luigi U
Mario Maker
Toads Treasure tracker
Super Mario 3D World
Nintendo Land
Hyrule Warriors
Yoshis Wolly World
Kirby Rainbow Curse
Remakes / re-releases;
Monster Hunter
Zelda TP
Zelda WW
Bayonetta
Up coming games of interest;
Starfox 0
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Paper Mario: Color Splash
Dragon Quest X
Zelda WiiU
Lego games suck, enjoy my list
When you say cheap spinoff im guessing you mean cheaply made rather than cheaply priced, Captain Toad still costs 60 bucks!
And that’s not even to mention its best game, Wonderful 101 😛 Or Pikmin 3, or Kirby and the Rainbow Curse or whatever stupid name they gave it here, or ZombiU, or New Super Luigi U, or Xenoblade. And I think people like Project Zero too. Oh, and Bayonetta!