I am not one to follow the rumor train – generally they are all just wild fantasies that someone gets wind of and spreads it like fact, when it’s clearly unlikely. Generally though, rumors of the end of production on hardware and software tend to be true more often than not.
In this case, just hitting the scene is a rumor that WiiU production will end this week. If true, this says a few things: That Nintendo has produced enough consoles to fill what they think sales will be this holiday season, that they are confident they will sell all these consoles and haven’t produced too many, and, lastly, that they will be abandoning the console sooner rather than later.
It’s almost never a case for a console to end production before the successor console is released – there is traditionally a support overlap where the last generation is seen as the “budget” option, while the new console takes over and people, over a period of usually 2 years, begin to purchase the new hardware.
Nintendo is taking a risk here, but I think, if this is even true, it’s a risk that will pay out – WiiU sales just aren’t that great, and I think it’s safe to say this late in the game most people who really want one have one. As nice a console as it is, it just hasn’t taken off like Nintendo hoped. The Switch looks like it will provide the kind of gaming diversity that Nintendo hoped to provide with the WiiU.
This is a new time for Nintendo, though – it would be good for them to move past the DS and Wii legacy that sold so well a decade ago, and past that GameCube legacy architecture that has been expanded on for over a decade now. It’s done Nintendo well enough, but gaming has moved on. Motion controls are a joke, and while VR is the “wave of the future” and trending now, I think Nintendo is getting back to basics and focusing on a controller, the console, and the game itself.
We’ll see what happens.
http://www.polygon.com/wii-u/2016/11/1/13487008/wii-u-dead-production-ends
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/11/report-wii-u-production-will-end-this-week/