“Expect the unexpected,” I wrote less than an hour before Nintendo’s digital E3 2015 media briefing yesterday, and what we got was certainly that: no notable new Wii U games announced—at all—and not even a glimpse of the next true Zelda installment. What in the heck happened? The obvious yet sad explanation is that this is likely the beginning of the end for the Wii U.
Nintendo’s Wii U has been struggling for its entire lifespan, which began in 2012, but that didn’t stop them from absolutely nailing it at E3 last year. While their E3 show this year conjured up some of the same charm,
it faltered on substance in a big way, most notably with the absence of new Wii U games to show. With the “NX” system looming on the horizon, is software support for the Wii U already winding down?
Sure, there were upcoming Wii U titles at the show, but aside from that Animal Crossing/Mario Party mashup and a new Mario Tennis, there wasn’t a single new Nintendo game announced for the Wii U. Their excuse reason was they wanted to focus on games coming out in the immediate future, as Mario creator and Nintendo game design guru Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN, “My thing with E3 is that we always focus on what’s coming out in the immediate future. We have some really great Zelda footage, and at some point, we will be showing that off, but not today.”
And they made that clear before E3 as well, but it feels like thin PR speak when you consider Zelda was shown at last year’s E3 when it was still probably planned for a holiday 2015 release—not exactly the immediate future in June, 2014. On top of that, Star Fox Zero and Super Mario Maker were both shown at last year’s E3 despite not being released until over a year later, so it’s looking like just this year specifically Nintendo doesn’t want people thinking about the future too hard—which might have a negative impact on Wii U sales if their next console really is right around the corner.
They addressed that elephant in the room (edit: for clarity, the NX) briefly by mentioning they’ll have some proper news on it at next year’s E3, but the silence about Zelda with a new system on the way was probably the loudest thing about the show—even if Miyamoto promised that the Zelda we saw last year is still coming to the Wii U. That might be reassuring at first glance, but Nintendo fans will quickly remember how the GameCube’s last great game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, became a GameCube and Wii title, and Miyamoto didn’t say the next Zelda wouldn’t be coming to the NX.
But what is the NX? We recently couldn’t even decide if it was a true Nintendo home console successor or some other kind of device, and to be honest, we’re still not entirely sure—but comments by Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe sound like it will be. Speaking about a new Metroid title (and not that weird troll-in-video-game-clothing announced for the 3DS), Tanabe told Eurogamer (emphasis ours), “If we started for Wii U now, it would likely take three years or so. So it would likely now be on Nintendo’s NX console. It’s a long time but it would need to include a lot of content, which would take a lot of work on the development side.”
Unless Tanabe is mistaken, the cat’s out of the bag, and the Wii U’s successor will be unveiled at next year’s E3, when the Wii U will only be four years old. That’s a pretty short console lifespan, so Nintendo’s plan of offering mostly outdated hardware to offset the cost of an expensive gimmick might not have panned out the second time around with what was basically the equivalent Nintendo DS: Home Console Edition.
So with all the smoke and mirrors cleared up, Nintendo’s E3 showing painted a pretty clear picture: the Wii U is on the way out. It may still be a fun console with some truly great games—Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros., Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, probably the new Zelda, and more—but at this point, it seems like buying a Wii U will be more about what it already has than what’s coming in the future. If you were on the fence about buying a Wii U, this E3 was probably a good indicator of what you’d be signing up for.
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