Editorial: The Wii U is going out with a whimper and that sucks

Three months ago I wrote an opinion piece and said, it was a good time to buy a Wii U. I still think there is value in buying a Wii U this late in the game, especially since a lot of titles are coming to the Nintendo Selects range, the Wii U eShop is brimming with amazing Nindie content (how long will that last) and of course Breath of the Wild.

But for those who already have invested in the console, for those who have been there since day one – the system is effectively dead. That really sucks, but what’s worse is the way it’s going out not with a bang but with a whimper. In just over a month Paper Mario: Color Splash will launch, it’ll probably be good despite the hate-mind against it since reveal. After that though, what’s left for the Wii U?

LEGO Dimensions and Skylanders.

Sure we have The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sometime in March, but until then there’s nothing scheduled at all for the Wii U from Nintendo or third parties at retail. November? Nothing, December? Nil, January? Zero, February? Zilch. Including most of October and then March, that’s over 6 months of absolutely no releases for the system.

Are we just supposed to accept that?

Obviously in reality there’s nothing we can do, third parties won’t have a bar of the system, Nintendo’s teams have moved on and in some cases we’re getting ports of Wii U games on the 3DS. You can’t blame Nintendo for that, there’s almost 5 times the amount of people who own a Nintendo 3DS – porting them makes financial sense and no one should begrudge Nintendo for wanting people to play their games.

Nintendo is adding value to the Nintendo 3DS by porting games to the system, adding amiibo support to Animal Crossing: New Leaf, New 3DS gets SNES games on Virtual Console – the 3DS is going to go out with a bang. Nintendo has doubled down on that system.

Elsewhere we have both Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem coming to mobile which should be fun if nothing else. There’s no shortage of stuff to play for Nintendo fans.

Whether or not the Wii U is your only console, it still feels like we’re getting robbed of a great send off for the console. Maybe it just doesn’t deserve it or maybe Nintendo is better off just cutting and running?

If it is, it’s time to reveal the NX. It really is.