Earlier this week, Japanese news publication Nikkei reported that Nintendo Co Ltd would be stopping production of new Wii U consoles later this year, but now Nintendo has denied that claim, saying that it has no plans to kill off the Wii U in the near future.

“This isn’t an announcement from our company,” a Nintendo spokesperson told IT Media (translation via Kotaku). “From the next quarter and thereafter as well, production [of the Wii U] is scheduled to continue.”

Of course, Nintendo is known for being vague when it comes to the game company’s future plans, and the spokesperson’s statement could be interpreted a number of different ways.

“The next quarter and thereafter” does not exactly rule out the possibility that the Wii U’s life cycle could be coming to a premature end, and as rumors of an announcement for Nintendo’s next console, Nintendo NX, become more and more frequent, that possibility seems all the more likely.

Nintendo NX controller leaked?

Image credit: Perkele37 | Reddit

Rumors about exactly what type of game console Nintendo could be cooking up next have been flying around since before we even knew that NX existed, and speculation about the console’s controller in particular was fueled by a patent application filed by Nintendo last year.

This week, photos of a controller that look identical to Nintendo’s patent were posted to Reddit by user perkele37, who claimed that the photos are the actual controller for Nintendo’s unannounced console.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the photos are genuine, but if they are, it seems hard to imagine that NX will be the holy grail Nintendo needs to match the success it had with the Wii. The alleged NX controller looks unwieldy even by Nintendo’s standards, which has had its share of oddly-shaped controllers.

There is the possibility that the device in the image could be a peripheral for the new system rather than its sole controller. Otherwise, we could have another Virtual Boy on our hands, which is the last thing Nintendo needs after the mediocre performance of the Wii U.

Image courtesy of Nintendo Co Ltd