If you still have a Nintendo Wii U console at home and you haven’t used it for more than five years, you’re going to have to leave it where it’s gathering dust. It has stopped working.
According to a report published on the website of The Computer Tinkerersome players have discovered that the device stopped working, despite the fact that the latest firmware (5.5.5), which brought additional improvements to the general stability of the system and other minor adjustments to improve the user experience, arrived surprisingly in March 2021.
This is surprising because old consoles are highly valued by gamers and collectors, especially since they offer the possibility to play retro titles. In the case of Nintendo, their “current” generation device is the Switch, in quotes because it was released in 2017, the same year that the Wii U stopped being produced.
But the Switch has the problem that it’s not compatible with all previous generation games, including those on the Wii U, released in 2011 and trying to compete against the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One.
What about the Wii U?
Some gamers found that their Wii U stopped working by seeing memory errors with code 160-0103 and 160-2155. The following image is an example of what the screens show.
Apparently, leaving the console unused can cause this type of problem in the same way that it occurs if we use it over the years. The report explains that Wii U’s internal eMMC NAND Flash memory is prone to failure.
If your Wii U has this problem, factory resetting the console is not a viable solution because it is considered bricked in these cases. You can backup the NAND or repair it. However, Nintendo no longer supports the device, so everything is left to the owners of the equipment.