Someone at Nintendo finally remembered to press the “On” button for the Wii Shop Channel and DSi Channel after several weeks of both services being completely offline.
While users can now once again access these services, the remaining functionality is still rather limited. If there’s software available that you already own, you’re free to redownload it. However, no new purchases can be made by any means, including adding credit via the now defunct Wii/DSi Shop point cards.
Nintendo initially ceased its proper support for these services a few years ago; the DSi Shop closed down in 2017, followed by the Wii Shop Channel in 2019. In both instances, the company has left a vague time period set in place for when the servers would be made completely inaccessible, even for redownloads.
The recent downtime has been in place for the last few months, with a specific reason for the outage not really being detailed by the company. Before the outage, Nintendo simply stated it would be performing “maintenance” on the servers.
While it’s likely not that someone actually forgot to turn the severs back on once the maintenance was completed, it’s clear that it wasn’t a very high priority to do so.
As the Nintendo Switch continues to grow in popularity, the company is continuing to understandably divert its resources to the hybrid. This explains why both the Wii U & 3DS eShops will also soon be losing their core functionality, as was first announced in early 2022.
In each case where Nintendo has announced one of its digital storefronts closing, debate has been stirred as to whether or not the industry is doing enough to ensure the preservation of game history.
While we’ve already seen several (and continue to see even more) older titles be revitalized for re-release on new systems, there are thousands of games which will likely never get the chance. In a perfect world, gaming catalogs for every system would remain readily available. But, between issues such as licensing agreements and the cost of hosting servers, the likelihood of this happening in earnest is slim, to say the least.
Source: Nintendo Everything
