The Nintendo Wii and DSi shops disappeared without any warning in the middle of March. At the time, Nintendo said “the Wii Shop Channel and Nintendo DSi Shop are currently undergoing maintenance”, but then complete silence followed. The good news is that silence has now been broken. The bad news is Nintendo has only said they still have “nothing to announce” regarding the Wii and DSi shop closures.
The future of the Wii and DSi shops
Nintendo has been winding down the Wii and DSi stores for a while now. The DSi store was closed in 2017 while the Wii store was closed in 2019, meaning players could no longer buy new games for either platform but could still redownload games they had previously purchased. Since the middle of March, the latter has been impossible too. Many players are eager for any news about the stores’ return as Nintendo had promised to “provide an update at a later date”. However, Nintendo has now told Youtube channel GameXplain that there was “nothing to announce” about the Wii and DSi shop maintenance so far, something that’s only causing more frustration.
The thing that is worrying players the most is that Nintendo had said the “ability to re-download software will also be removed at a later date” when both stores were closed. Players were hopeful the stores would return if they were undergoing maintenance. The download server that stores all of the update and shop data for both stores is seemingly still active. This means players can still redownload their titles through third-party tools like NUSDownloader and it’s just the stores’ frontends that are not functional, but that’s not terribly helpful for those who don’t have a modded console. As always, we’ll let you know if we hear anything more.
In other news, Outright Games announced five new family-friendly games for consoles and PC, including those from Paw Patrol, DC Justice League, and Star Trek Prodigy. Elsewhere, new Pokemon Go social features will encourage players to meet up again for local raid battles.
