Talks about Nintendo discontinuing the production of Wii U recently made rounds on the Internet, but the company quickly dispelled all the rumors, saying that it doesn't intend to do anything along those lines.
First off, the now-disproved report came from Japanese newspaper Nikkei. It said that Nintendo will stop manufacturing the Wii U later this year with plans to clear out the remaining inventory by the end of 2016. It continued to say that the video game company already did so for select accessories of the console.
CEO and Founder of Kantan Games Dr. Serkan Toto translated the report and somewhat backed it up in a tweet.
On a more personal note, I like the Wii U a lot, but it did absolutely nothing for Nintendo as a company. This move makes total sense.
— Dr. Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) March 22, 2016
With all of these laid out, the news seemed likely to hold true – until now, that is. It should be noted that he's correct in his observation about the Wii U not doing much for the company, as the console has been having a difficult time in competing with the PS4 and the Xbox One.
According to ITMedia (translated), Nintendo says that it was just a Nikkei article, "not an announcement from the company." The video game maker even continued to say that it has "plans to continue production until the next fiscal year and beyond."
Given that Nikkei has a pretty smudged record of reporting news that ends up to be false after all, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Well, one report about Nintendo thinking about stepping into the mobile gaming scene was previously debunked back in 2014, but in a twist of fate, it actually turned out to be true two years later with Miitomo.
To boil things down, the Wii U is here to stay, and Nintendo likely has some things up its sleeve to improve the outlook for the console moving forward.
