ASDA Reducing Wii U Support

ASDA, the second largest supermarket chain in Britain and part of the Walmart chain of stores, has confirmed that they will no longer be stocking Wii U consoles, games or accessories in any of their 550 brick and mortar stores.

“ASDA continues to offer customers a selection of Wii U games and accessories through Asda Direct”

ASDA Direct, the online portal for the store, will continue to stock select Wii U products.  An ASDA spokesperson has issued a statement saying ‘ASDA continues to offer customers a selection of Wii U games and accessories through ASDA Direct, but these ranges are currently not on offer in ASDA shops’.   The supermarket giants online portal will stock Wii U titles ‘on a merit basis’ .  Interestingly at the time of writing ASDA direct is not stocking 3DS consoles either, and only contains a small selection of 27 3DS titles.

This is a yet another blow for Nintendo who are struggling to get a foothold with their Wii U.  Nintendo took to E3 with a large variety of very good games, and Nintendo needs these games on shelves in order to move more hardware units.  ASDA had already decided to bypass the console blockbuster Pikmin 3 and now with their withdrawal of all Wii U stock from shelves, Nintendo’s in-store visibility across the UK has taken a massive back step.