{"id":1422,"date":"2025-08-29T10:17:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/11\/the_wii_u_first_launched_eight_years_ago_today"},"modified":"2025-08-29T10:17:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:17:41","slug":"the-wii-u-first-launched-eight-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-wii-u-first-launched-eight-years-ago-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wii U First Launched Eight Years Ago Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wii<\/a><\/figure>\n

Eight years ago today on the 18th November 2012, Nintendo’s Wii U hit the market in North America. Coming off the back of the Wii, Nintendo’s most successful home console of all time<\/a>, hopes were no doubt high for this latest system, but we all know how the story goes from there.<\/p>\n

With its blocky GamePad controller and HD visuals \u2013 a first for Nintendo at the time \u2013 the Wii U soon appeared in Europe on 30th November and in Japan on 8th December the very same year. Customers could opt for either a ‘Basic’ white set with 8GB of memory, or a ‘Premium’ black set with 32GB of memory and a copy of either Nintendo Land<\/a> or ZombiU<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Wii U sadly turned out to be something of a flop going by Nintendo’s usually lofty standards; now discontinued, the console only ever shifted 13.56 million units worldwide. There are plenty of theories behind this \u2013 the branding was confusing for customers, third-party support wasn’t as strong as it might have been \u2013 but ultimately, Nintendo decided to wrap things up earlier than expected and launch itself into a new generation with the Switch, which has already demolished Wii U’s lifetime sales.<\/p>\n