Nintendo Wii and DSi stores down for almost a week and no one knows why

Posted by

Boss on Mar 21, 2022 - 11:51AM

An abrupt end of an era? (pic: Nintendo)

Following the news that the Wii U and 3DS storefronts will be shut down, the Wii and DSi stores have also vanished without comment.

Whatever your feelings regarding Nintendo’s decision to , at least it’s given fans a year in advance to make any last minute purchases. Plus, you’ll still be able to redownload any games you’ve bought even after their closure.

This used to be the case with the Nintendo Wii and DSi storefronts too, but it’s recently been discovered that both are now completely inaccessible. This means any and all digital purchases can’t be redownloaded.

While this was always inevitable, Nintendo gave no warning that it would be doing this. It’s not clear exactly when they went down but, according to dataminer OatmealDome on Twitter, they’ve been inoperable since March 16, making it nearly a week.

[Wii]

The Wii system update servers and the Wii Shop Channel (you should still be able to access it to re-download purchases) have down for a while today.

I wonder if Nintendo hasnâ€™t noticed yet – their status page still lists everything as operational.
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome)

The one glimmer of hope is that this may not be deliberate on Nintendo’s part. A user on the claims that the actual download server that contains all the update and shop data is still active and it’s just the frontend that’s unavailable. This means it’s possible to download games, but you will need third party software.

So this could be a simple error and Nintendo will have it fixed in due time. Plus, the error codes suggest that the reason people can’t access the stores is due to Internet connection issues, which simply isn’t the case.

At the time of writing, however, Nintendo hasn’t commented on the situation, so it’s not clear if it’s even aware of what’s going on yet.

The response from fans has been unsurprisingly negative, especially given the growing importance of video game preservation. Nintendo has even been accused of with its shutdown of the Wii U and 3DS eShops.

When Sony announced it would be doing the same to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita storefronts, there was enough backlash to and keep them open. That’s unlikely to happen with Nintendo, given it’s far more stubborn nature.