Theory: Could The Wii U Be Responsible For Nintendo Power‘s Closure?

Quite a while ago, it was to the dismay of many gamers when it was announced that veteran monthly gaming publication Nintendo Power magazine was to see its final issue come year end, one of those many being me. Seeing that Nintendo Power is one of the longest-running publications known to the gaming world, having been published continuously starting from its initial form as the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter since the summer of 1988, it‘s pretty upsetting to see such a great magazine cease its prolonged existence. But among all the widespread grievance, a ton of confusion as to why the publication was to so suddenly disintegrate was also amassed. Current publisher of Nintendo Power, Future Publishing, had stated that Nintendo was apparently uninterested in renewing their mutual contract nor did they want to regain direct control over the publication, and even so that they had always been quite “difficult to work with“.

But they also offered another statement concerning the issue that, upon recollection, has captured my current thoughts; Future also said Nintendo was dismissive of their initiatives to bring Nintendo Power into the digital era – which would be, of course, a more healthy long-term move for their readership base. Seeing as the struggles for the U.S. magazine industry are still imminent following the 10% decline for overall circulation numbers in the first half of 2012, you‘d think Nintendo would be willing to partake in such a notion to keep their most prominent publication alive – but alas, it amounts to nought. I, personally, find this particular sudden incident to be very strangely interesting though. My thoughts on what may be the possible case for this decision are most probably not a solid angle or explanation for the ill fate of the magazine, but I think there could be a chanced connection somewhere were they to turn out true. You may feel free to disagree from this point on, but allow me to elaborate regardless.

If I remember correctly, in the early half of the year before much was to be known about the Wii U preceding E3, a fairly interesting rumour came to (a pretty neon) light: many sites reported the possibility of a full-fledged Nintendo app store being in the works for the Wii U, but not much was to be known of it then. But even further, it was also rumoured alongside this that within the fully-loaded app store, Nintendo was planning to launch a vast e-book service for their digital consumers. The new service was to allegedly also find its way to the 3DS at some point, and would offer digital books, newspapers, comics, a host of magazines concerning various topics (sports, fashion, tech, music etc.) and many game guides from Nintendo‘s backlist of such publications as well. It was also said to be likely that the older discontinued range of these publications would be available free via the service, and that Nintendo was also allegedly in concealed discussion with various magazine publishers at the time. All this content was to be readable on the Wii U GamePad, and would almost certainly provide a new positive perspective on Nintendo‘s online services. Although the rumour started and ended right there and never really came to further fruition, I‘m just thinking: were it to be true, could this be the reason accountable for Nintendo‘s lack of interest in continuing Nintendo Power?

It‘s a pretty small hunch based merely on what I find to be an intriguingly possible rumour, and were it to be proven true, I personally believe this may have some speculative bearing on why Nintendo would suddenly see no interest as to continue the publication, and why they were reluctant to go ahead with Future Publishing‘s digital plans, which I‘m assuming only meant branching out to the web, as well as iOS/Android smartphones and tablets. Although as I said, seeing as the rumours above weren‘t given proper confirmation, it‘s only questionable reasoning at most – but also seeing as Nintendo still have quite a lot of unveiling to be done concerning a huge lot of the Wii U‘s digital and online functionalities, especially on Nintendo Network and the Wii U eShop, maybe – just maybe – it‘s only just a matter of time? We shall have to see what Nintendo has left for us in the remaining weeks we have left before the Wii U is finally hits stores worldwide.

In the mean time, let known what your thoughts and opinions are on this possibility. Do you believe the Nintendo app store and e-book service rumours may be true? If so, might they have had any effect on Nintendo‘s decisions regarding Nintendo Power?