For gamers looking for a relatively inexpensive way to get their hands on the Wii U, buying the 8GB Wii U Basic Set was one of the ways to go, although granted this wasn’t exactly cheap, but it was still cheaper than the other models offered by Nintendo. However it looks like the Basic Set could be going away for good soon.
Nintendo has recently announced in Japan that the Wii U Basic Set will soon be going out of production, although they did not say when exactly but basically with production winding down, remaining units once sold will not be restocked. Nintendo has also stated that they will be introducing a white 32GB model of the console starting in June, although this appears to be for the Japanese market at the moment.
Unfortunately there is no word on whether this discontinuation of the Basic Set in Japan will affect other parts of the world where the console is being sold. However if you might recall, in 2013 there was talks about the Basic Set being discontinued, although Nintendo had released a statement then that the company was simply rebalancing the units of the 8GB and 32GB models.
However as Kotaku notes, attempting to find the 8GB Wii U in the US has becoming increasingly difficult which seems to hint that perhaps the company is slowly phasing out that particular model stateside too.