UK retailer Asda is going to move away from selling Wii U, 3DS, Wii and DS games in roughly 8 weeks' time. The retailer supposedly stopped selling Wii U games back in 2013, but the new initiative makes it clear that Nintendo games from current/last gen platforms will no longer be available to purchase. No official reason for the decision was given.
Yikes. Sounds like they're trying to say something, or had a dispute with Nintendo directly. Pretty dicey move considering Nintendo's future plans and possible popularity growth, but that's just my outlook really.
I guess they literally weren't worth the space.
Wii U has been a disaster for retail.
Caveat: I own and frequently use a Wii U and have Splatoon on pre-order.
It's been a disaster for retail only because retailers have been trying to make it a disaster. They have no one to blame but themselves.
No retailer goes out of their way to make sure their stock doesn't sell. Not a single retailer. That is counterproductive and goes against the point of being a retailer.
Not pushing things enough? Sure. The failure of a product in a store can be attributed partly to the retailer themselves but they certainly don't push to make sure that it fails. That's ridiculous. And besides, in every Asda I've been to, Nintendo typically got just as much exposure for their games as PlayStation and Xbox did (less in recent years given how much smaller the selections have been for Wii U and 3DS over Wii and DS but still, they've had decent displays).
Just to play devils advocate, sometimes it's better to downplay some stock items you have so that it juxtaposes nicely against more expensive products that you can entice people to buy, or items that have addons or special deals that promote multiple purchases. Depends on how popular some things are and some things aren't. But yea it's generally bad business to not sell your stock. idk just sayin'
While as a company, maybe not, but I've been to individual stores (some gamestops and game crazy back in the day) where they are at best uninformed when it comes to nintendo products and at worst they will openly joke about and slam nintendo to customers. It is that kind of attitude that will decrease sales of nintendo products in that store. And while it may be just individual stores in a chain the larger corporation clearly doesnt do much to prevents situations like that from occurring.
Though, nintendo sales haven't really been that strong in the sony leaning uk, in general. And nintendo uk's recent push to turn that around with crazy incentives hasn't really made any difference.
