Nintendo will shut down the Wii Shop channel on January 30th, 2019, marking the end of an era for the service that first came online for Wii consoles in December 2006. The shutdown will happen gradually: users will still be able to add Wii Points until March 26th, 2018, and still be able to use those points to purchase content until the shop fully goes offline in January 2019.
Nintendo is shutting down the Wii Shop in 2019
You also won’t be able to re-download previously purchased Wii and Virtual Console games
Additionally, at some point — Nintendo hasn’t put an exact date on it yet — you also won’t be able to re-download previously purchased Wii and Virtual Console games or the Wii System Transfer Tool to move files to the Wii U. Nintendo recommends that if you have games you want to download or content you want to move to a Wii U, do it while you still can.
It’s a particularly curious decision, given that there’s a lot of legacy Nintendo content locked away in the Virtual Console that Nintendo has bafflingly not brought to the Switch yet. Still, as we pour one out for the Wii Shop Channel, we can look back and remember the best thing about it: the incredible background music.
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