Nintendo sold a single new Wii U in the US this year

polygon.com:

Nintendo discontinued the Wii U in 2017, and will shut down all online connectivity for the console by the end of this year. Despite it all, unboxed units are still out their own shelves: According to Circana industry analyst Mat Piscatella, Nintendo sold a single new Wii U in the United States in 2023. It’s reportedly the first new Wii U sold since May 2022.

Piscatella said on X, formerly Twitter, Circana tracks sales data for consoles across “most retailers,” which makes up 97% of the hardware retail sales. The Wii U purchased from a retailer this year wasn’t a refurbished or used console, which there’s certainly a more active market for. It was a brand new, unopened Wii U in the year 2023. The Wii U was not exactly a popular console. Some would even call it a flop, as it sold just 9.2 million units in the three years after its launch in 2012.

I hope September’s Wii U buyer has access to physical Wii U discs, because Nintendo shut off its digital storefront on March 27.

So how does this happen? It’s pretty rare for a retailer to have stock this old at any point; manufacturers would eventually ask for the consoles back. This rare, new Wii U console must have gotten stuffed away for a while before the miraculous sale in September 2023. Piscatella told Polygon that information for where the Wii U was sold isn’t available. He added that one-off sales like this — for other consoles and games — happen “fairly regularly,” likely when the dust is brushed off something buried in the back of a retail store. There’s no much to the data other than that, just “fun peculiarities,” he added.

We’re just left with the hilarious knowledge that someone walked into a retailer, saw a Wii U on the shelf, and thought… You know? I’m going