Update: According to a statement provided to the Japanese site IT Media (and translated over on Kotaku and Business Insider), Nintendo is denying that Wii U production is in its last days. Stating that the report in the Nikkei "is not an announcement from the company," the statement goes on to say that Wii U production will continue. There is a bit of confusion with regards to how long production will continue for, though. Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft translates the sentence in question as "From the next quarter and thereafter as well, production [of the Wii U] is scheduled to continue," but over on Business Insider the sentence refers to production continuing for the next "fiscal year and beyond." If it's the former, then the original Nikkei report could still be accurate, but if it's the latter then it comes further into question.
As rumors swirl about the NX, I suspect that we'll continue to hear reports about the Wii U's production slowly winding down.
Find the original story below.
A report from the Japanese financial newspaper The Nikkei revealed today that Nintendo will be halting production of the Wii U and some related accessories this year. The paper additionally states that Nintendo will reveal their new console (codenamed NX) sometime this year.
Before anyone jumps to speculate that this means for sure that the NX will be released this year, it's important to note that this could just be Nintendo needing to shift through its remaining Wii U inventory. The end of production doesn't mean that there aren't any Wii U units available from here on out, it means that Nintendo has enough consoles stored up to last between now and whenever they've decided to phase it out.
That said, I'd really love to see the NX launch this year, and more than that, I'm hoping that it has at least some degree of backwards compatibility with the Wii U. It's not where I do most of my gaming, but last year was fantastic for the console, with Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, and Xenoblade Chronicles X all showing the potential for the device. Once the NX launches, whatever it is, I'd really appreciate being able to return to those games (and a handful of others) without dragging my Wii U out of storage.
(Shout out to Jeff Grubb over at VentureBeat for bringing this to my attention!)