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Asda pulls Wii U from shops as Nintendo confirms low sales

The supermarket has yanked the new console from shelves, as Nintendo says it only flogged 160,000 Wii Us globally between April and June.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
2 min read

Asda has yanked the Wii U from shop shelves, as new numbers from Nintendo prove that the new system is faring poorly.

The jolly green mega-grocer, which dropped the price of the console to £149 back in May, will still let you buy the Wii U online if you fancy, but it's booted the tablet-oriented console from its brick-and-mortar supermarkets. Asda was keen, however, to stress it hadn't lost faith in Nintendo entirely.

In a statement the supermarket said, "We continue to support Nintendo as a partner and we have recently extended the number of stores and the space we allocate within these stores to... Nintendo's 3DS games and 3DS-XL handheld consoles."

Grim sales

Sales of the Wii U -- which came out in November -- have stalled, with Nintendo confirming today it had sold a meagre 160,000 consoles in the three months between April and June.

Nintendo blamed the sales collapse on a recent lack of in-house-produced games. The Japanese gaming giant did say that its 3DS console had started making more money, however.

In our review, we said the Wii U's touchscreen GamePad held the potential for fun, but that it was questionable whether developers would bother to create games for the complicated controller.

Things will only get tougher for Nintendo's Wii U in the next few months, as Microsoft and Sony get ready to launch their own, brand-new consoles. Unless Nintendo summons forth a drastic price drop, I suspect it'll be the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One winning shoppers' cash this yuletide.

Watch this: Nintendo Wii U hands-on