An official end of an era within another era
Before we get into this seemingly arbitrary bit of news let’s go back in time a bit. The Wii U, the successor to Nintendo’s most popular home console ever — the Wii — launched in 2012. It was met with a tepid reception for myriad reasons that have been discussed many times over, and never really caught on worldwide. It ended its reign with 13.56 million units sold worldwide — a number that the Switch already surpassed in roughly one year.
Nintendo killed the sale of the Wii U in many regions, but it’s still alive (although not well) in Japan. The thing is Media Create, the chief sales source, stopped reporting on hard numbers in 2017. Famitsu was still game…until this week. Evidently the outlet is not tracking the system any longer, with the final reported Wii U sales (as of their last bit of data) clocking in at 3,303,541 in Japan.
I have laid this sweet prince to rest so many times, but like The Undertaker, it keeps rising up and becoming briefly relevant again. This might be one of the last times I ever get to talk about it in a sales capacity: just like Shawn Michaels was supposed to retire after losing to The Undertaker (cue Ron Howard voice: he didn’t).
Famitsu No Longer Tracking Wii U [Japanese Nintendo]