Bad news for anyone trying to re-download an old DSi Games or Wii titles via each console’s respective store channels: Currently, players are reporting that both channels are down, and have been for a few days. Many are now concerned the channels may not return and potentially lock away a lot of digital content that people owned and didn’t get a chance to download before the potential surprise shutdown.
Correction: This story originally confused 3DS and DSi. This has been fixed and the links and headline have been changed to reflect the fix.
As discovered by Eurogamerit seems that since March 16th the official Nintendo DSi and Wii Shop Channels were offline. If this shutdown is permanent and these stores never return, then they appear to have been shut down by Nintendo without warning.
To be clear, you have not been able to purchase anything from the Wii Shop Channel since 2019. And the DSi Shop didn’t let you buy content before that in 2017.
In both cases, however, Nintendo did not announce any dates or concrete plans for the complete closure of these stores. If they actually shut down for good with no heads up, that’s bad.
The possible early and unannounced closure of these stores is a big deal for many. Once (or if) these digital stores permanently close, you will not be able to re-download content that you previously purchased there. Many gamers would probably like a few months to download and install some of their favorite or hard-to-find DSi and Wii exclusive games before the door to the servers is closed forever.
igamesnews has reached out to Nintendo to say the stores have been down for days and if there are any plans to bring them back online.
Over on the announcement page for the news that Nintendo is ending support for the DSI Store, that’s what the publisher said about the futureEmphasis from me:
“The ability to re-download purchased content or transfer content to a Nintendo 3DS family system will continue after the closure of the Nintendo DSi Shop for an indefinite period of time
And over on the support page announcing their plans for the Wii Shop Channelfind a similar message, and Nintendo does it recognize it will probably shut it all down someday and again, emphasis mine:
“But, for the time being, you can still re-download purchased content or transfer this content from a Wii system to a Wii U system. Note that These features will eventually be retired at a later date.”
Still, pulling the plug on these deals without warning seems pretty crappy. It’s also possible that this is just an extended period of downtime due to behind-the-scenes issues or technical issues of which we are not aware. If so, Nintendo has yet to publicly acknowledge the outage or its cause (as of March 20 at 3:15 p.m. EST).
Another interesting thing is that some players reported the possibility of still being able to download games and DLC through third-party tools like NUSDownloader. This seems to imply that the servers are still somewhat active, but the storefronts are down for unknown reasons.
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