After 22 years of successful partnership, Madden is no longer on a Nintendo platform.

In a move we all suspected to be true when EA didn't mention Madden on the Wii U at their preview event earlier this spring, Madden NFL Football will not be on a Nintendo platform this year for the first time since 1991.

This abandonment of the Wii U by EA can be taken in only one way: EA does not see Nintendo's new console as a viable platform to develop one of its key flagship titles on -- which is a sure sign of trouble for Nintendo's beleaguered console, as if you needed another sign of storm clouds brewing.

Sales of the Wii U have been abysmal in the new year, with the Wii U lagging behind in sales to much older (and still more powerful) consoles like the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3.

With weaker hardware, less third party support, and a reliance upon a rather gimmicky gamepad (again), it appears Nintendo tried to dip into the novelty well a time too many and now finds itself in a precarious position moving into the future. The hope around camp Nintendo is that a strong lineup of first party games will bring gamers back to the Wii U in droves as 2013 wears on -- but an important question lingers: How many gamers are going to spend $300 for Wii U hardware with PS4 and XBox One hardware sitting on the shelf next to it for a similar or slightly higher price point?

The answer to that is most certainly very few.

Even well regarded video games market analyst Michael Pachter has deemed the Wii U a "mistake" that Nintendo "probably can't recover from."

The problem with the Wii U is it has nothing unique it is offering to gamers except for Nintendo first party titles -- a strength which simply isn't as strong as Nintendo hopes it is. As time passes, the emotional connection avid gamers have with the old Nintendo characters is going to fade simply because a lot of kids grew up with other platforms.

I have said that Nintendo 'Dreamcasted' themselves with the Wii U before, but it's entirely possible they did worse than that. Not only did Nintendo not send hardware and games forward with the Wii U, they also quickly relegated themselves to a position where the only reasonable outcome could really be the death of the company's hardware division.

Third party support has crumbled for Nintendo, and Madden's defection is just another symptom of that problem. Sales are slowing down over time. Perhaps most importantly, development for the Wii U isn't as easy as it will be for Sony and Microsoft's new consoles.

Worst of all, no one is buying the console and developers aren't developing for it -- a problem which rarely works out for a hardware platform.

With EA tightening their belts company wide, I think it's a stretch that you get more than Madden and FIFA on the Wii U anytime soon (if ever). 2K hasn't announced any plans for developing on the Wii U again this year either, but even if 2K does develop for the platform they likely will only bring NBA 2K14 to market.

There's not much hope for sports gaming on Nintendo's Wii-U console.

For Nintendo, the sun seems to be lowering on the horizon on what has been a successful run spanning four separate decades of hardware which has captured the imaginations of people worldwide. But it's clear that the novelty of a new Mario game isn't enough to make up for hardware which can't fully compete with Nintendo's competitors, both of which have superior consoles on the market which are approaching a decade in age.

Sports gaming and Nintendo used to go together like America and apple pie.

Now it appears that as with the rest of the Nintendo empire, all that is left are memories of good times long past, with only an extremely shaky and rinky facade left in a world that's a decade down the road.