Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be the last Nintendo game for Wii U

Not even four-and-a-half years after launch, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be the final first-party title to come to the system.

This was confirmed by Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who spoke to Polygon following the Switch launch event in New York City Friday.

“From a first-party standpoint, there's no new development coming after the launch of the legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” he said. “We really are at the end of life for Wii U.”

Fils-Aime said that Wii U titles will continue to be sold at retail and on the Nintendo eShop, and the company had not begun any discussion for sunsetting online services for the console.

“From our standpoint, sunsetting is quite some time into the future. The ongoing activity from an online standpoint on [Mario] Kart and Splatoon is significant. We're going to continue to support that.”

That may include “Project Giant Robot,” a code name for a Shigeru Miyamoto-produced tech demo that first appeared alongside Star Fox Zero at E3 2014. Since then, the project hasn’t been seen since, aside from appearing on Nintendo’s quarterly upcoming games slate distributed to shareholders with a “TBD” next to its name. The game involved using a Wii U GamePad’s accelerometer and gyroscope to control a large robot, and knock over your opponent.

In March of last year, Miyamoto told Time, “Project Giant Robot’ was something we started as a second project, and unfortunately we haven’t yet decided to turn that into a full game.”

Polygon has reached out to Nintendo to confirm the fate of that tech demo. Another demo, called “Project Guard,” was shown at the same time. That became Star Fox Guard, a pack-in game included with Zero that mutated the tower defense formula; players needed to use security cameras to stop waves of enemies attacking their base.

Looking back on Wii U

The Wii U’s life was a short one, in the console world. Launching on Nov. 18, 2012, Nintendo’s console never caught on with consumers like its Wii predecessor. Only 13.36 million units had sold as of Sept. 2016, according to Nintendo earnings.

Fils-Aime said the company has taken lessons from that console in its launch of Switch. One takeaway: know exactly what your product is — or what players will think it is.

“Even today when I ask people, ‘so what was Wii U all about?,’ I get a wide variety of responses,” he said. “In managing the business, that's just not good.”

For the upcoming Nintendo Switch, Fils-Aime feels much more confident in the messaging: “a home console you can take with you.”

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes to Wii U — and the Switch — on March 3.