Image: Nintendo / Kotaku
Bad news for anyone trying to re-download some older DSi games or Wii titles through each console’s respective store channels: Currently, players report that both channels are down and have been for a few days. . Many are now concerned that channels may not return, possibly shutting down a lot of digital content that people own and don’t have a chance to download before a potentially surprising shutdown.
improvement: This story basically confuses 3DS and DSi. This has been fixed and the link and title have been changed to reflect the improvement.
as seen eurogamer, it appears that the official Nintendo DSi and Wii Shop channels have been offline since March 16. If this shutdown is permanent and these stores never return, it looks like they’ve closed with no advanced warning from Nintendo.
To be clear: You haven’t been able to buy anything on the Wii Shop channel since 2019. And the DSi shop stopped letting you buy stuff before that in 2017.
However, in both cases, Nintendo didn’t announce any dates or specific plans for when these stores would close entirely. If they’ve actually been shut down for good, without raising their heads, that’s bad.
The possible premature and uninformed closure of these shops is a big deal for many. Once (or if) these digital shops close for good, you will be unable to re-download any content previously purchased on them. Many players would probably prefer a few months to download and install some of their favorite or hard-to-find DSi and Wii exclusives before the servers are shut down forever.
Kotaku has reached out to Nintendo about the store closing for days and if there are plans to bring it back online.
On the announcement page for the news that Nintendo was ending support for the DSi Store, this is what the publisher said about the future, emphasis mine:
“The ability to re-download purchased content or transfer content to the Nintendo 3DS family system” Nintendo DSi will continue for an as yet unspecified time after shop close, If you’re thinking of transferring your DSiWare content to the Nintendo 3DS family system, we encourage you to do so as soon as you’re comfortable with, while the service is still available. ,
And on the support page announcing its plans for the Wii Shop channel, you can find a similar message, and Nintendo does Accept This will probably stop all this one day and emphasize mine again:
“Although, You can continue to re-download the content you purchased for a period of time Or transfer that content from Wii system to Wii U system. Be aware that These features will eventually end at some future date,
Even so, it feels very embarrassing to completely pull the plug at these outlets without warning. It is also possible that this is an extended amount of downtime due to some behind the scenes problems or technical glitches that we are not aware of. If so, Nintendo has yet to publicly acknowledge the outage or its cause (as of 3:15 p.m. on March 20).
Another interesting thing to note is that some players have reported the ability to be able to download games and DLC through third-party tools like NUSDownloader. It looks like the servers are still in some capacity, but for some unknown reason the storefronts are down.
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