While production of the Wii U console ended several years ago, it had been maintaining support from most streaming apps. At the time of writing this article, Netflix still maintains support for the Wii U as a streaming device according to Nintendo’s support page, as does Crunchyroll. While not necessarily a streaming service in the typical sense, YouTube still maintains support as well.
While these services are still running as of now, the list of services still maintaining support for the aging console is certainly dwindling. In late 2018 to early 2019 discontinuation of service notices began to start popping up. The services discontinued include Hulu and Amazon Instant video who both had notices about their discontinuations posted to Nintendo of America’s support site. In the U.K., however, the BBC iPlayer app was discontinued long before the others back in 2017 just as Wii U was ending production.
While Hulu service was discontinued in the United States early last year, the service was still going in Japan. Then, in October of last year, they announced that they would be ending support for the Wii U on July 24, 2020. This gave Hulu customers in Japan nine months’ notice before their service would end and allowed them to plan accordingly in terms of subscriptions and/or obtaining alternative means of accessing the service.
This would all change starting on April 10, 2020. The Wii U Hulu app began having issues at this time such that videos could not be played. The Hulu team investigated the issue and after 20 days they were no closer to solving the problem. Considering the fact that the team was not even certain they would have service restored by the original discontinuation date, they have instead opted to officially end Wii U support effective April 30, 2020.
The official Hulu statement includes a link to instructions on how to cancel the service should the Wii U have been the only means of accessing the service. Also, while it is not specifically mentioned in the official statement, there are reports that vouchers for one month of additional service are being offered for compensation for the early discontinuation of service. I was not able to verify this on Hulu’s website, so this may be an offer only offered to those who contact customer service.
