After months of rumors and a long accumulation of bad numbers in sales, today Nintendo makes it official production to the Wii U in Japan. The way we have known this decision was to see that the Japanese page notice that sales will end soon in the only two models sold in the country still appears.
The notice gave it to Kotaku, which was seen coming especially after knowing its latest product, the Nintendo Switch. The product had not had the expected success almost from the beginning and though assured that it would continue to occur earlier this year and have to know what will happen in other countries, the decline of the Wii U is guessed for some time.
A sad end eclipsed by the novelty
Denoting sales and that the product was not a joy and much less for the Big N, with 53% fewer sales than in 2015 in the period between June and September as the latest data. What we remembered after announcing the Nintendo Switch, also recalling that game sales recorded only 3.6 million units and that in fact the brand and decreased production.
The modest success of the handheld console can also be seen if we compare it with that of its older sister the Wii. In this first Nintendo managed to sell 102 million units, while the Wii has sold 13.36 million and because of it said to be a lack of titles that give reasons to opt for the console.
The history of a defocused product
The Wii U was launched in 2012, six years after the original Nintendo Wii submit. Sales of the Wii U showed that the product was not of interest to an audience that seemed to prefer the Nintendo 3DS or Wii
And only a few years later the nightmare began. In 2013 sales of the Wii U showed that the product was not being of interest to an audience that seemed to prefer the Nintendo 3DS or the Wii. When by March of that year they expected to sell 5 million units, months later they had only managed to sell 3.6 million.
A year later things were not much better to the console, in fact they were much worse as they passed the quarters. 2014 began with the third consecutive quarter of losses for the company, and in May gave figures showing that total sales in 2013 were lower than those obtained in the first quarter after its launch in 2012.
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Thus, Nintendo admitted since then that had failed to focus on the product and differentiate it from the Wii platform facing the viewer. There the plan was to try to increase the number of sales with improvements of the product through updates and new titles.
That plan seemed to work, since 2014 finally sales increased 30% at the hardware level, but especially the swelling was noticed in games, selling up to 75% more than the previous year. The “culprits” were mostly Mario Kart 8 (1.7 million in the United States alone) and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (1.3 million units).
The problem was that the plan did not go far enough. The lack of titles made the Big N desapprove chase the opportunity that usually Christmas for sales in February 2016 and again recorded bad figures for the Wii U. While Sony sold 35 million consoles, the Wii U was in 1.87 million units in the last quarter (2.1% lower than in the same period last year).
A future of Pokémon and modules
The horizon as to what portable Nintendo already envisioned a time, but with releases of Pokémon Go and Nintendo Switch is much clearer. The success of the first live already this summer, and although the numbers appear to have declined Nintendo still trying to keep that fire avivándolo more Pokémon.
We will see if the Nintendo Switch achieves the success that the Wii U did not have with its proposal of modules and cartridges. At the moment we are already enjoying is the NES mini, bet the Big N for home.
Tags: Wii U
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