Six years after Nintendo stopped producing it, and 15 months after its last sale, a single new Wii U unit was sold in September according to video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella.
Piscatella works at Circa, a company that regularly tracks and publishes retail data from the video game industry.
After months of speculation, Nintendo announced it would be ceasing production of the Wii U in November of 2022.
September’s Wii U sale was purchased from a traditional retailer, meaning that we’re not talking about a Used (or even new) console on eBay or Craigslist. Someone walked into a retailer and walked out with a brand-new Wii U.
The last Wii U console sold brand new in the same way happened in November 2021.
While we don’t know where the unit was sold, The Verge notes that it was likely sold by a smaller retailer rather than a big box store like Best Buy or Target. Traditionally, when a console is discontinued a business will be given a period to sell through its inventory, and after some time passes will send what it has left back to the manufacturer.
Instead, The Verge speculates that the device was sold by a retailer that was too small for Nintendo to want to ask for it back, or perhaps they might have not even realized the retailer had it in the first place.
The Wii U was introduced in 2013 as a competition for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. After years of weak sales, Nintendo admitted that the device was a bit of a failure, in part due to the lack of games that were available for the device.
