Summary
According to a recent sales data report, Nintendo managed to sell one newWii Uconsole in the U.S. earlier this year. This is surprising, since Nintendo has been phasing out the Wii U ever since the Nintendo Switch’s release in 2017 and the Wii U’s discontinuation the same year. The hybrid gaming console has been a massive success since its launch, withthe Switch managing to become the best-selling Nintendo home consoleof all time, with it also being the third best-selling console in history. The same cannot be said about the Wii U, which released to a mixed reception.
Released in 2012, the Wii U was a console that was criticized for a variety of reasons, including a weak lineup of launch games, limited amount of third-party support, and poor marketing that wasn’t enough to communicate it was a new console and not an extension of the previous one. Despite that,the Wii U had a lot of unique and fun games, with many of them being ported to the Switch over the years. There’s apparently still a new Wii U console still being sold somewhere, according to industry analyst Mat Piscatella.
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Piscatella revealed that Nintendo managed to sell one new Wii U in the U.S. earlier in September, which is the first to be sold since May 2022. This is based on data from Circana (formerly known as The NPD Group) Retail Tracking Service. Piscatella compares this instance to when three ofSony’s defunct PS Vitaswere sold in November 2021. The precision of this figure was based on Piscatella acquiring and processing individual store sales data for every SKU (stock keeping unit, a number assigned to products to keep track of internal inventory) across retailers, which when combined, accounts for the hardware market.
When asked how a newWii Ucan still be found in the wild, since Nintendo bought back all retailer stock of Wii Us after it stopped production, Piscatella jokingly asked “So you never lost your keys or misplaced a sock?” This likely means that some retailers didn’t sell their Wii U consoles back to Nintendo, some theorizing that a local chain or Walmart still held onto the system.
While theWii U’s online services are shutting down gradually, the console still has some fans. There have been fanmade servers to help support games likeSplatoonandMario Kart 8, while an active homebrew community has been working to preserve its games. There are also some games that haven’t been ported to the Switch yet, likeXenoblade Chronicles X. Regardless, there’s still some love for theWii Ueleven years removed from its mixed launch.
