Nintendo has officially stated that the eShop storefronts for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U consoles will be shut down. Although the shutdown has been declared for early 2022, it will not begin until March 2023. The notice was made to allow clients “plenty of time” to wrap up loose ends, according to the corporation.
Users will no longer be able to acquire new software once the storefronts on both platforms shut. Of course, this implies that no releases of any type will be available on any system.
Closing down the 3DS / Wii U eShop
The eShop will be phased out over time on both the Wii U and 3DS. It starts this year and ends on May 23, 2022, when you won’t be able to add money to your account using a credit or debit card on either system. Also available in physical locations are Nintendo eShop gift cards, which will cease to work on August 29, 2022. Nonetheless, they’ll be redeemable until March 2023.
Customers may transfer their eShop balance across the Wii U, 3DS, and Nintendo Switch consoles. This will continue to work normally until March 2023, when any monies left in a user’s account will be transferred to the Switch.
The Wii U and 3DS, on the other hand, will not become complete tombs. Nintendo confirmed that online multiplayer will be available “for the foreseeable future,” as will the option to redownload previously bought games, apps, and DLC through the eShop. So you’ll be able to access stuff you already possess after March 2023, but you won’t be able to buy anything new.
The history of the 3DS / Wii U eShop
In Spring 2011, Nintendo released the 3DS eShop for the first time. Even at that stage, it was a significant upgrade over the DSi’s stores and even the Wii Shop Channel. Nintendo was making it apparent that digital distribution will play a far bigger part in their economic strategy going forward. The Wii U’s version of the eShop continues to demonstrate that progress, with capabilities like background downloads and, of course, enabling whole console games and DLC to be totally digitally available for the first time on a Nintendo home system.
The Wii Shop Channel’s mind-numbingly small filesize constraint of 45mb for any games/apps was gone, therefore preventing full retail titles from being digitally published on that system. During the Wii U/3DS period, this resulted in an explosion of indie support, with smaller companies flocking to both platforms, owing not just to the modernisation of internet capability, but also to Nintendo aggressively coercing indies into its camp. Of course, the Switch has benefited enormously from these efforts, but credit must be given to the 3DS/Wii U for blazing the route and establishing the stage in the first place.
The Wii U/3DS version of the service added even more capabilities to these classic games, such as save states and remappable controllers. Nintendo also took this as a chance to re-release certain formerly physical-only DS and Wii games, all of which were ported to the Wii U.
Many of the Wii U/3DS VC games have not been ported to the Nintendo Switch Online collection, which serves as a kind of clone of the Wii U/3DS VC. As a result, some customers have been harshly critical of the new service, citing the drastic decrease in content diversity as compared to the Virtual Console service.
When the Wii U and 3DS eShops shutter completely next year, they will officially join the Wii Shop Channel, which closed its virtual doors in 2019. The Wii U was withdrawn in 2017 before the arrival of the Nintendo Switch, and after nine years of manufacturing, the 3DS was eventually retired in 2020.
But still one could say Nintendo has taken their time.
