Sure, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild there's one more high-profile game coming to Wii U. But Nintendo is also releasing the new Zelda for its upcoming new console, Nintendo Switch. And it's not even promising that the game will be there for its March launch, just a vague "2017." By the time Zelda finally ships, you may have already upgraded your console.
In fact, it's unlikely that actual Wii U hardware will even be on shelves to purchase by the time Zelda is out. Nintendo has said it is ending the production of Wii U hardware in Japan, and that it will not ship any more Wii U consoles to U.S. retailers during this fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2017. So if you go to your local store and you don't see any Wii Us on shelves now, it's very likely that you won't ever see them again.
Thus ends a short, strange, and ultimately disappointing chapter in Nintendo's history.
If you found Wii U's concept---a controller with its own screen---strange when Nintendo announced it in 2011, that's only because you hadn't been paying attention. Nintendo has been chasing the second-screen concept since at least the late 1990s, when it first hooked up a Game Boy Color handheld to a Nintendo 64 console. It went all-in on this strategy with its GameCube console---anybody else remember playing Zelda: Four Swords and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles with your Game Boy Advances hooked up to the GameCube?
Wii U was supposed to deliver this dual-screen gameplay without the onerous requirements of buying and assembling two machines and all the associated cablery. And it did! Only problem is, Nintendo still wasn't quite sure what exactly it wanted to do with it. Wii U may have shared a name with its predecessor, but in many respects it was the anti-Wii; whereas the universal appeal of Wii was easily explained the moment you saw someone whack a tennis ball, Wii U was the most complicated game pitch ever: "Okay, so, I'm the ghost and I'm running around, and each of you guys has to look for me, but you can't see me, so you have to tell everybody which color player you are and if you feel the controller vibrating that means the ghost, or me, is close, so..." and Mom has already set down the Wiimote and is now slowly backing away.
I wanted to be wowed by Wii U. (Hey, I really liked Crystal Chronicles.) I liked NintendoLand, the Wii U pack-in game that had a dozen different weird takes on dual-screen gameplay. I was all in for 5-6 years of weird-ass experimental games using two screens. Instead, it took Nintendo no time at all to abandon its initial "asymmetric gameplay" pitch and just push everything to "off-TV play," allowing you to play games entirely on the GamePad screen, without monopolizing the TV. This turned out to be very convenient, although it meant the games weren't any different from what you could have played with a standard controller.
A Farewell to Wii U, a console barely recognized among the throngs of gaming enthusiasts who eagerly embraced new horizons in home entertainment – an outdated gem beneath Nintendo's illustrious crown.
Farewell to Wii U, a console system that bid on experience and found it unplayed by too few.
A Farewell to Wii U, the once-beloved gaming console that became but a distant memory in an era of more powerful and socially advanced platforms.
In a last salute to Wii U, the gaming console that became an echo of its time amidst inevitable transitions.
