Wii U Consoles Bricked If Not Played, Claims Revealed

It’s a sad day for Wii U console owners! One unlucky gamer recently took to the internet to vent their frustration about a strange bug that’s been bricking Nintendo’s ill-fated console.

A tech-savvy tinkerer recently took to the internet to share a wild story about a bizarre bug plaguing the Wii U. Apparently, if you don’t use the console enough, it can become bricked and completely useless.

Fans are venting on Wii U

To make matters worse, Nintendo recently had to take some popular Wii U game servers offline due to a major security issue. It’s not a good time to be a Wii U owner, that’s for sure.

It’s not surprising that the Wii U struggled to find its footing, with only 13.5 million units sold throughout its lifetime. People were disappointed with the limited third-party game selection, the wonky controller setup, and the lack of an internal hard drive. Plus, with the Switch’s success, the Wii U was doomed to fail.

It’s so bad that Nintendo is even shutting down the Wii U eShop this month, which is the final nail in the coffin for this ill-fated console.

Wii U consoles bricked if not used

It seems like the Wii U just can’t catch a break. According to a user report, the Wii U console can be bricked if left unused for too long. When booted after a prolonged period, it can result in an unrecoverable system failure indicated by a 160-0103 Gamepad error. This error code signifies a critical NAND memory corruption issue that renders the console useless. To make matters worse, attempting a factory reset on an affected Wii U will permanently brick it as well.

Although the reporting user found a way to recover from this state with a NAND backup created on a hacked console, they confirmed that the affected hardware they inspected was not modified in any way. This implies that all Wii U systems could potentially be exposed to this issue. And once the console displays the 160-0103 error, it’s already too late to take the homebrew route.

To date, searching the web for user reports mentioning this error code yields at least several hundred results from social media and traditional forums as of March 3, 2023. So, it’s not an isolated incident, unfortunately.

It’s not the first time Nintendo has had hardware defects. In fact, a former Retro Studios employee recently recalled how a bad batch of consoles forced the team to keep their GameCube in a freezer while debugging Metroid Prime.

Here’s how you play GameCube on Wii if you wanna try and see if there’s anything unusual on the system.