After what felt like an eternity for gamers, the Wii Shop Channel and DSI shop are officially back up for players to utilize. The shops were down for the count for months, suffering from significant outages due to connectivity issues. Luckily, the shops are now accessible again for players to redownload and obtain their previously purchased content.
When the outage was announced initially, Nintendo only stated that the shops were down for "maintenance," not that they were experiencing severe connectivity problems, and that the shops were entirely inaccessible for an unknown period. The company did not provide gamers with any form of ETA at the time, which left people wondering if the shop would ever make a comeback.
The Wii Shop stopped accessing sales in 2019, and the DSI shop closed in 2017, making purchasing products from the store impossible. The store was left running to allow gamers access to the games they previously purchased and downloaded. With the shops being back up and running, which was first covered by Nintendoeverything, players are once again able to redownload any content they have but are still unable to buy anything new.
More so, any owners of the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS will have access to their precious games and content for the foreseeable future; this is the good news. The bad news is that Nintendo went on to state, "As of late March 2023, it will no longer be possible to make purchases in Nintendo eShop for the Wii U system and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. It will also no longer be possible to download free content, including game demos. Furthermore, as this date draws closer, related services will cease to function."
For anyone hoping for the shops to remain open indefinitely, sadly, this isn't an option at this time it seems for Nintendo. For fans of the system that's bad news, as well as those concerned about digital archiving as many WiiWare or DSiWare games may be lost to the aether if care is not taken.
