Nintendo Halts Wii U Production In Anticipation of Switch Launch (theguardian.com)

New submitter Shane_Optima writes: The Guardian reports that Nintendo has ceased production of the Wii U after a little more than four years. From the report: "In late January it was announced that Nintendo had ceased production of the Wii U console. The follow-up machine to the hugely successful Wii had sold fewer than 15 million units worldwide since its launch in 2012. PlayStation 4 sold more in a year. Wii sold more than 100m in its lifetime. What happened? How did Nintendo, one of the oldest and most respected companies in the video game industry, get it so wrong? And did anything good come out of the Wii U era? How will the machine be remembered, if at all?" Perhaps it could have something to do with the fact that the Wii U bundle didn't include a Wii remote-type controller, and the much-hyped secondary screen was most commonly used for solo gaming -- the exact opposite of the Wii's emphasis on a social experience and is an area where they have to compete with cell phones, tablets and their very own DS line. Nintendo still seems hellbent on selling a console-tablet hybrid, but at least this time it sounds like an interesting controller will be included.

Comments

Multiple Screens

[MindPrison]

I remember it was (at least in the stores) hyped that separate screens (like the controller that comes with the Wii U) would be sold separately and we would be able to have 4 screens on it. Well that never happened.

Another bummer, was the fact that the launch came with an horribly slow OS and it took like forever to switch games. Plus the fact that the update was gigantic, so even on a 12 Mbit line it took like a good 5 hours to download the firmware update. This was a major setback, not to mention extremely annoying for kids expecting to play the games straight out of the box.

Just as a nail in the coffin, the good games didn't come out before 6 months after the launch and we where starved of good stuff, to top it off the Netflix application had a lot of bugs in it and rendered my Netflix viewing useless for 4 months. The Youtube app was hugely flawed as well, and the much anticipated Nintendo TV (which my unit kept promising would launch soon) never launched, but was an app...that never uninstalled - but gave us a message "No service in your area", enough to disharthen you every time you checked it out.

And the nails in the coffins kept coming, no new Zelda game, just raking in money on old-refurbs (Windwaker became Windwaker HD, followed by the next in the series, but still just HD remakes). Mario Maker was exciting the first 2 weeks, until I discovered that people just made simple "press-and-run" games that made all the good games "hidden", just to get scores so people could upload MORE levels themselves, of the same kind...and haul more votes. Mario Kart 8 was great, but I quickly got bored with it after a few weeks too.

Personally, the best games on the Wii U (for me) was Splatoon and Super Mario 3D world. It had awesome replayability and I ran trough it twice. Splatoon I kept playing every day for a month.Good times, as long as it lasted.

Personally, I don't think there's much wrong with the platform itself, the switch is gonna suffer the same fate if they keep people waiting for the big titles, and charge 60$ for 10 year old wiimotes. No more relaunches, we want fresh titles, and keepem coming if you want us to fatten your wallets.