The performance of Nintendo Co Ltd’s Wii U video game console has been respectable for the most part, but when compared to other current gen consoles or the runaway hit that was the original Wii system, the Wii U’s sales have been somewhat lackluster. In 2013, financial analyst Michael Pachter even called the Wii U’s sales figures “pretty sad.” Now, another analyst believes that Nintendo may already be moving away from the console entirely, less than three years after its release.

“While the Wii U has around 380 console exclusive titles, the majority were launched 2013,” Stewart Rogers of VB Insight told GamesBeat. “Fewer exclusives were made available in 2014. In this respect, the Wii U is on the wrong side of the bell curve and Nintendo appear to have been winding it down already.”

Aside from Splatoon, Nintendo has few exclusive titles to look forward to on the Wii U in the near future, especially with the delay of the next The Legend of Zelda game until next year. Many of the company’s more recent announcements have focused on products such as Amiibo, which are not exclusive to the Wii U, as well as Nintendo’s partnership with DeNA to create games for smartphones and tablets.

Finished so soon?

The motivation behind moving away from the Wii U is largely the result of the system’s disappointing sales. By January, Nintendo had only sold around 9.2 million units, roughly have of the 18.5 million units that the PlayStation 4 has sold. By comparison, the Nintendo Wii sold over 100 million units in its seven year lifespan. Barring some miraculous change in the console’s circumstances, it seems unlikely that the Wii U will ever come close to astronomical figures like that.

In December, Nintendo exec and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto admitted that the company had already started work developing its next console, codenamed NX. So far there are no details for the new system, but the fact that the company would already talk about its next console just two years after the release of its last does not bode well for the future of the Wii U.

Image credit: Nintendo (c)