Wii U and 3DS Discontinued by UK Chain Asda
Nintendo's Wii U was in the midst of a high streak, but the latest news coming from the U.K. could hurt the console's comeback plans.
United Kingdom retailer Asda just announced that they will no longer be stocking any Wii U consoles or games in their 555 stores, reported Joystiq.com. However, they will carry a few games over their portal network on a "case-by-case" basis.
"Asda continues to offer customers a selection of Wii U games and accessories through Asda Direct, but these ranges are currently not on offer in Asda shops," said a representative of Asda to Computer and Video Games. They clarified with the following: "Asda will stock [Wii U] games on a title by title merit basis as they come along through Asda Direct. We will continue to support Nintendo as a format holder partner."
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According to CVG, UK's largest grocer will also not be stocking Nintendo's handheld, the 3DS.
Asda had been trying desperately to move the consoles out of their stores by doing a series of price cuts. After price cuts could not sell the systems, they decided to nix the console altogether.
Nintendo issued a statement concerning the decision by Asda to CVG.
"Nintendo UK does not comment on specific business practices with individual retailers. However, as we have seen with Nintendo 3DS, software sells hardware, and with titles such as Wonderful 101, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and Super Mario 3D World already announced for this year as well as the recently released Pikmin 3 and New Super Luigi U having reached number 2 and number 6 in this week's chart respectively, we are looking forward to the year ahead on Wii U," the statement read.
The Wii U is beginning to lose some of its third party support as companies are reluctant to work on projects because of bad sales figures, according to Joystiq.
Satoru Iwata is taking blame for the Wii U's lackluster sales and basically said being innovative is hard.
"Because we're always trying to be unique, it takes some energies on our side to [make] people understand the real attractions about whatever we are doing," Iwata said in June to CVG.
"We have been unsuccessful in coming up with one single software with which people can understand, 'OK, this is really different," he continued.
