Nintendo Denies Report That Wii U Production Will End This Friday

It was reported earlier this week that Nintendo will be ending production of the Wii U this Friday. Nintendo has confirmed that the report is untrue and that production of the 2012 console will continue.

“Multiple sources” indicated that Nintendo will shut down production of the Wii U this week, as reported by Eurogamer yesterday. The original report claimed that the shutdown of production was scheduled after the final deadline of orders passed on Monday. Eurogamer stated that Nintendo declined to comment about the article.

“There is no change to our continuing [Wii U] production,” a Nintendo spokesperson told the Japanese website IT Media (translation by Kotaku). The spokesperson also admitted that he or she doesn’t know the specifics of Eurogamer’s article, simply stating that the report on ending the production of the Wii U “was not true.”

The spokesperson added that Wii U production will continue even with the Nintendo Switch scheduled to go on sale next year. There are also new Wii U games scheduled for release as well, like “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”

This is the second time that the production of the Wii U was falsely reported as ending. Back in March, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei published an article stating that the Wii U production will be discontinued by the end of 2016 to make way for the Switch (previously known as the NX console). Nintendo quickly denied that report as well. Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima also suggested that Wii U production would close by March 2018, as pointed out by GameSpot.

The Wii U never did live up to Nintendo’s expectations. The console was released in November 2012, and has only sold 13.36 million units worldwide as of September 30, 2016. This is far from the 101 million units sold for 2006’s Wii. This is probably one of the reasons why a lot of people believe that the end of the Wii U is fast approaching.

The Nintendo Switch, the company’s next-generation console, is scheduled to go on sale in March 2017. Nintendo will be announcing its specs, price, launch titles and exact release date on Jan. 13, 2017 at a special event in Tokyo.