The Wii U gets the last laugh

Plus: Trump's tariffs vs. game consoles, what Nintendo wants from Palworld's studio, and three new gaming billionaires

The Wii U. Image: Nintendo

In a week of surprise comebacks, let’s acknowledge the resilience of Nintendo’s disastrous Wii U console. It was launched in November 2012 just two weeks after Barack Obama’s re-election and was discontinued, first in Japan, three days before Donald Trump’s first inauguration. 

But this week, an announcement from Nintendo that was more focused on the still-secret successor to the Switch, doubled as a glorious affirmation that the Wii U is getting, perhaps, the most successful console afterlife ever.

The Wii U, a console with a screen in its controller, lasted just four years (the Switch is on its eighth).

Its run ended so badly that Nintendo sold less than 800,000 of them in the console’s final 12 months of release. 

But the Wii U has charted an unusual comeback, as Nintendo has repackaged one of its first-party Wii U games after another for the Switch, selling more copies with each recycling effort.. 

• Mario Kart 8 sold 8.5 million copies on the Wii U? How cute. Its Deluxe reissue for Switch has since sold 64.3 million copies on Nintendo’s newer system.

• New Super Mario Bros. U on Wii U clocked in at 5.8 million copies. Nintendo brought it to Switch years later, bundled with New Super Luigi U (3.1 million copies on Wii U) and the combo release on the new system sold 17.8 million copies.

In 2021, I said the Wii U had proven to be the Switch’s secret weapon. Wii U games kept the Switch loaded with new releases (technically: new-if-you-skipped-Wii-U-releases). And Nintendo wasn’t done. Earlier this month, the company promised another repackaged Wii U game, Xenoblade Chronicles X, for an expanded Switch port this coming March. 

But if the Wii U legacy was just that it was reborn on the Switch you wouldn’t have today’s piece.

Tuesday night, something new happened. While the Blue Wall was falling in America, Nintendo announced a big update about the successor to the Switch: it would be backwards compatible with the existing Switch.

Great news for Switch game owners who wouldn’t have to abandon or re-buy new versions of their favorite Switch games. Great news for Nintendo’s stock, apparently. And sweet vindication for that Wii U game library. With that news came clarity: Most of Nintendo’s best games from Wii U, via their ports to the Switch, are going to live on and run on a third straight Nintendo system.

This hasn’t happened before.