"Nintendo knows it has to support a product for a minimum of 10 years or they risk some class action," a former Nintendo of America employee told us. The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that Nintendo has been eyeing this shutdown for a long time now, and that 10-year cut off comes in November 2022, a decade on from the Wii U's launch. "Internally, NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd, the main Japanese company of which NOA is a subsidiary] has been waiting for that day since 2014 based on sales... Nintendo looks at the first 2 years as the indicator of when to start packing it in with a console."