Nintendo sold a single new Wii U in 2023, against all odds

Nintendo has discontinued its Wii U system in 2017. It will also shut off all online connectivity by the year’s end. Mat Piscatella is an analyst at Circana and he says Nintendo has sold just one Wii U new in the United States since 2023. It’s reportedly the first new Wii U sold since May 2022.

Piscatella said on X, formerly Twitter, Circana tracks sales data for consoles across “most retailers,” which makes up 97% of the hardware retail sales. The Wii U purchased from a retailer this year wasn’t a refurbished or used console, which there’s certainly a more active market for. In 2023, it was a new Wii U that had never been opened. It was not a very popular console. Many would call the Wii U a failure, since it only sold 9.2 millions units within three years of its 2012 launch.

I hope September’s Wii U buyer has access to physical Wii U discs, because Nintendo shut off its digital storefront on March 27.

What happened? It’s pretty rare for a retailer to have stock this old at any point; manufacturers would eventually ask for the consoles back. It’s likely that this rare Wii U console was piled away before it went on sale in 2023. Piscatella revealed to Polygon the information. You can find out more about this by clicking here. the Wii U was sold isn’t available. He added that one-off sales like this — for other consoles and games — happen “fairly regularly,” likely when the dust is brushed off something buried in the back of a retail store. There’s no much to the data other than that, just “fun peculiarities,” he added.

We’re just left with the hilarious knowledge that someone walked into a retailer, saw a Wii U on the shelf, and thought… I’m going to buy that. I’m going to buy that. Here’s to hoping it was not a clueless, but well-meaning person looking to bring the latest Nintendo console home to their child.

There aren’t many Wii U games that haven’t been ported over to Nintendo Switch, but there are some — including The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker HDThe following are some examples of how to get started: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess HD.