The Nintendo Wii U's production run may be finally coming to a close after four years at the forefront of Nintendo's product line. Although not confirmed by anyone in an official capacity, Eurogamer cites a number of sources which have confirmed that the last Wii U will roll off the production line this week.
Nintendo denies these claims of course, stating that: "Even though the Nintendo Switch is slated to go on sale, [Wii U] production is scheduled to continue."
Still, most don't believe it.
The Nintendo Wii U has been Nintendo's worst performing console ever, despite managing to shift over 13 million units. Compared to its predecessors, that's child's play. The Gamecube, the last Nintendo console that wasn't much of a hit, managed to sell 21 million systems, while the N64 shifted 32 million during its life cycle.
The Wii of course dominated them all, with more than 101 million of the console sold, easily dominating that generation of systems, despite its lower hardware offerings.
The Wii U then should have been a solid sequel, but for a variety of reasons it didn't. The name meant very few people realised it was a brand new system, rather than an upgrade; the lack of third party support meant that many of the most popular games just weren't available on it; despite being innovative, no developers really utilised the multi-screen gaming system, and by 2012, anyone who wanted a tablet had one any way - and they were a lot better than the fat-bezelled display that the Wii U came with.
It was a fun system with some great games on it, but it couldn't really compete with the Xbox One or the PS4, despite having a year's head start on them. That's how poorly it performed.