On Nintendo’s official Japanese site, the company has announced that production is scheduled to end soon.
Update November 10 - 5:09pm: Nintendo of America issued the following statement to Kotaku: “We can confirm that as of today, all Wii U hardware that will be made available in the North American market for this fiscal year has already been shipped to our retail partners. We encourage anyone who wants Wii U to communicate with their preferred retail outlet to monitor availability.”
Below are the only two Wii U consoles currently in production for Japan.
The text reads, 近日生産終了予定 (kinjitsu seisan shuuryou yotei), which means, “Production is scheduled to end soon.” After that, the announcement reads “within Japan” (日本国内 or Nihon kokunai).
The pictured Wii U console is the white 32GB “Premium Set” console, which is the only console listed on the Japanese website’s Wii U hardware page. The other Wii U consoles, including the black variation, are listed as “no longer in production.” In 2015, Nintendo killed off the 8GB Wii U in Japan.
In the past, Nintendo has often announced the discontinuation of hardware variations by similar notices on its official site.
Last week, Eurogamer reported that multiple sources confirmed to the site that the final Wii U would roll off the production line on November. At that time, Nintendo denied that report to a Japanese news site, stating, “There is no change to our continuing [Wii U] production.” The Nintendo spokesperson also added that the report that the Wii U was ending production “was not true.”
“Even though the Nintendo Switch is slated to go on sale, [Wii U] production is scheduled to continue,” the Nintendo spokesperson said at the time.
Scheduled to continue, that is, until sometime soon when it ends. Maybe Nintendo will launch another Wii U in Japan for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Or maybe that will be a Japanese Switch exclusive...
No word yet as to how this announcement impacts the Wii U in other regions. Kotaku has reached out to Nintendo for comment.