Nintendo has announced its next home console and, reportedly, it’s already phasing out the Switch’s predecessor.
We knew this was coming, but according to Eurogamer, the last Wii U will roll off the assembly line this Friday as Nintendo halts production on the console.
According to the report, Nintendo has shipped a total of 13.36 million Wii U consoles, which is almost a quarter of the amount that Sony’s PlayStation 4 has sold, and a far cry from the 101 million Wiis that were moved.
Despite having a solid lineup of first-party titles, the Wii U never found reliable third-party support as most players and developers gravitated toward the much more powerful and simpler PS4 and Xbox One. And though a lack of third-party support may have been okay for the Wii, which could sell itself on novelty alone, the dual-screen Wii U experience wasn’t exactly as exciting for the casual players who gravitated toward the Wii. That problem also wasn’t helped by Nintendo’s marketing and the device name, which often left customers confused over whether it was an addition to the Wii or its own separate console.
Microsoft and Sony say that they’re committed to their consoles, but the Wii U shuffling off this mortal coil marks the beginning of the end of the eighth generation of consoles.