Semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics has announced that it is to close four semiconductor plants in Japan within 2-3 years. The problem is one of the closing factories was responsible for manufacturing the Wii U Embedded DRAM. Nintendo was responsible for more than half of the load of the factory at peak times, but due to slow sales of the console the company made the plant run at a loss. There’s a possibility that this will have a large impact on Wii U production in the years to come.

http://mynintendonews.com/2013/08/04/the-factory-responsible-for-wii-u-edram-set-to-close-within-2-3-years/

I don't see how this will even affect the Wii U. Two years until closing? That's probably almost as long as Nintendo took to design the thing: that's plenty of time for Nintendo to negotiate with another company to replace them.

Nice for the advance warning, though.

Xbox circa 2004 anyone? I know that was a contract dispute, but it could hurt production a lot, and might even halt Nintendo from making major pricedrops.

My god, when will we start hearing the good news for the U? :(

They could probably arrange it, but it will still cost money. And judging by the factories current issues, I doubt that many would do it for cheap, if they would do it at all.

OH MA GERDZ sound the bells, Nintendo is DOOOOMMMEED!!!!!!

And another event in the life of business that Nintendo will recover from. 4 years from now, we'll barely remember this.

Hope Nintendo never makes business with Renesas again. This company was responsible of the development of the Wii U GPU, and we know how that ended. I hope that Nintendo goes nVidia for their next console.

"Nintendo could try to contract another company to produce the component, but there are circumstances that make it difficult. According to a Renesas executive the production of that semiconductor was the result of the “secret sauce” and state-of-the-art know-how part of the NEC heritage of the Tsuruoka plant, making production elsewhere difficult. In order to restart mass production in a different factory redesigning the component may be necessary."

Everything costs money, but I don't see this being a major factor this time. If bad goes to worse and the Wii U still sells pitifully for another year or two, Nintendo has the cash on hand to stockpile the component. If the Wii U starts to sell better, it'll be a lucrative high volume low-tech contract most chip manufacturers will be able to fulfill in their sleep. It's the nether in the middle where the Wii U just lingers, selling neither well, nor poorly, that'll be the toughest call.

I'd be saying someting completely different if it were the whole GPU.

Obviously not. The original link's been updated with a link from Gaf. Apparently Nintendo's already found/ restructured a replacement.

Oh fair enough, this is a bit of a non story then.