Nintendo has taken Wii and DSi stores offline worldwide unannounced

It appears that Nintendo has taken the digital Wii eShop and the DSi Shop offline without announcing it first. As a result, users will no longer be able to download purchased products for the Wii and DSi. Nintendo has not yet commented on the situation.

The listed virtual stores for the consoles are according to a data miner inaccessible since at least March 16. When starting, nothing happens for over a minute, after which an error message appears that differs per console. Both errors would refer to user connectivity issues, which is unlikely in this case. A GBAtemp forum user reports that Nintendo’s actual download servers are still online. This indicates that the frontends of the virtual stores have been blocked, but not everything has been shut down.

It has not been possible to make online Wii or DSi purchases through the respective stores for years. Until now, however, it was still possible to download previously purchased products. In the announcement for the Wii eShop closing Nintendo reported at the time that content could be transferred to a Wii U. Downloading and transferring already purchased games would be ‘no longer possible in the future’. Nintendo didn’t mention a specific date at the time and hasn’t announced anything along those lines since early 2019.

Nintendo announced earlier this year that the shops for the newer Wii U and 3DS would be taken offline in March 2023. From then on it will no longer be possible to make purchases via the digital stores.