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Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel


Raidou Kuzunoha XIV

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Source: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/09/nintendo_has_announced_the_end_of_the_wii_shop_channel

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/information/2017/0929.html

 

So, after the DSi store was closed down earlier this year, it looks like the Wii shop is also set to close after first opening over a decade ago back in late 2006. The Wii shop is set to close January 31st 2019, but you won't be able to add funds or purchase any games or WiiWare after March 27th 2018.

 

Currently, you can still re-download DSiware you have purchased previously despite the store's enclosure, but Nintendo have already announced that they plan to discontinue this option as well at some point in the future. According to their official website, you'll still be able to re-download games and Wiiware after the store's closure in 2019 as well, and the option to move Wii data to a Wii U will also still be available. However, it's also stated that both these serviced are also scheduled to close at some point in the future.

 

What are your thoughts on this?

Personally, I'm surprised the Wii shop even lasted this long, but whenever an online store for games gets closed down like this, it always reminds me that you never really truly own digital games. The fact that Nintendo have already announced that being able to re-download your purchases will be disabled in the future just drills home that message. It's kinda depressing, but you really are just paying for the license to play the game, rather than actually buying the game itself. Of course, physical games won't last forever either, but I have a feeling a lot of my physical games are going to outlive my digital purchases.

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Nintendo has always been a bunch of a-holes when it comes to digital content. Stuff tied to consoles instead of accounts, shops that don't last forever... i still prefer PC and other consoles for this. Well i guess we'll be literally forced to pirate them when they won't be available anymore...

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I hope it's just Nintentdo being Nintendo to be honest, I think they should always keep some option open to download things you have purchased even if the store is closed. I hope this becomes less of an issues with Playstation and XBOX if the next generations are going to be backwards compatible but we will have to see, but I do wonder if they will do the same with the PS3 library at some point ... I don't see them dropping the shop for PS3 for many years to come but I'm more concerned about accessing purchased content 10 years from now and if it will still be possible.

 

But in reality, in 10 years time I will probably never touch games that are 20 years old anymore ... Maybe only to show my kids how things were "In my day." Time will tell I guess!

Edited by tpepper1985
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2 minutes ago, tpepper1985 said:

I hope it's just Nintentdo being Nintendo to be honest, I think they should always keep some option open to download things you have purchased even if the store is closed. I hope this becomes less of an issues with Playstation and XBOX if the next generations are going to be backwards compatible but we will have to see, but I do wonder if they will do the same with the PS3 library at some point ... I don't see them dropping the shop for PS3 for many years to come but I'm more concerned about accessing purchased content 10 years from now and if it will still be possible.

 

But in reality, in 10 years time I will probably never touch games that are 20 years old anymore ... Maybe only to show my kids how things were "In my day." Time will tell I guess!

They've already closed the PlayStation Mobile shop on Vita (RIP my game) and removed all those games from our download lists.

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I'm sad a little bit, with this, the DSi Shop, and Miiverse going the way of the dodo, but also, I mean, is this not just permission to pirate your games onto the machine? Like, I can almost guarantee that anyone using a Wii in 2017 is doing it for modding / pirating. Hell, the Nintendont Game Cube loader is the only reason I still own a Wii U.

 

That's not defending them, this does suck, and there should ALWAYS be some way of redownloading, or they should make it like Steam where you can burn it to a DVD without DRM or whatever the fuck they used to do, I don't know if they still do. Anyway, point is, taking away access for something you bought digitally is absolutely shit, and it should serve as a lesson to all y'all people.

 

I would hope these sorts of things never happen to the PlayStation side of things, but I mean, there used to be a big PlayStation Mobile tab on the Vita store that is now blank. Guess it's an inevitability, unfortunately. On the plus side at least, by the time the PS3 shuts down it's ability to download games, sync trophies, connect to the internet, and not be a paper weight in terms of digital content, we should already have cracked it so far open that I can put a Sega CD in there and have it load up. 

 

The point I'm clumsily trying to get at, is this is a sign that the console is 100% truly dead, and the purpose of a 100% truly dead console, is modding and pirating. See, that PSP 3000 I was just playing Simpsons Wrestling on five minutes ago.

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40 minutes ago, goodSuM said:

They've already closed the PlayStation Mobile shop on Vita (RIP my game) and removed all those games from our download lists.

 

But PSM wasn't really part of the main PSN/PlayStation Store infrastructure. Hell you couldn't even get those games outside of mobile/Vita.

 

I could buy anything else just fine from any PC browser.

Edited by Lance_87
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3 hours ago, tpepper1985 said:

But in reality, in 10 years time I will probably never touch games that are 20 years old anymore ... Maybe only to show my kids how things were "In my day." Time will tell I guess!

 

Certainly, everyone is different, but given the massive number of remasters and re-releases, lots of companies are banking on people wanting their nostalgia.

 

As for the OP, nothing surprising here. It sucks, certainly, and I'm not trying to give a pass to Nintendo for this (they suck), but it's hardly unexpected.

Edited by starcrunch061
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4 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

Nintendo has always been a bunch of a-holes when it comes to digital content. Stuff tied to consoles instead of accounts, shops that don't last forever... i still prefer PC and other consoles for this. Well i guess we'll be literally forced to pirate them when they won't be available anymore...

It really is quite appalling that they've only just caught up with what we'd take for granted on PS3 and 360 over a decade ago, with being able to re-download our purchases onto different consoles. And even then, the Switch has some restrictions as well. If I ever lost one of my 3DS systems, Wii or Wii U, or had them die on me, I've lost all my digital purchases forever, and that's something that's always put me off buying anything digitally unless I absolutely have to.

 

4 hours ago, tpepper1985 said:

I hope it's just Nintentdo being Nintendo to be honest, I think they should always keep some option open to download things you have purchased even if the store is closed. I hope this becomes less of an issues with Playstation and XBOX if the next generations are going to be backwards compatible but we will have to see, but I do wonder if they will do the same with the PS3 library at some point ... I don't see them dropping the shop for PS3 for many years to come but I'm more concerned about accessing purchased content 10 years from now and if it will still be possible.

 

But in reality, in 10 years time I will probably never touch games that are 20 years old anymore ... Maybe only to show my kids how things were "In my day." Time will tell I guess!

Digital content on the PS3 and 360 is something I'm worried about as well. At least with Microsoft they're offering backwards compatibility, but it doesn't seem like Sony are ever going to do this. I'm also concerned about what's going to happen to our PS Plus games after PSN does inevitably get shut down for PS3 and Vita. I know with the PSP, after they shut down the PSN store on it, you're still able to re-download your purchased content directly on the system, and still purchase games on the PSN store on PC, but I'm not sure if that will realistically last forever ever.

 

I don't know if I'd still be looking to play games I've had for 10+ years either and have already played. I can't say I go back to my old GBA, Gamecube, PS2 or older gen games too often (aka: never), but I still like knowing that I still "own" them and can still play them whenever I want (provided they still work)

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48 minutes ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

Digital content on the PS3 and 360 is something I'm worried about as well. At least with Microsoft they're offering backwards compatibility, but it doesn't seem like Sony are ever going to do this.

 

Good point on the 360, XBOX have already got thier bases covered here really, I know it's only a fraction of the 360 Library but alot of the big games are on there. I'm still holding out hope that Sony will maybe let you stream games you own a digital copy of from PSNow without having to rent it, this would be one solution they could implement in the future maybe as a PS+ feature.

Edited by tpepper1985
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Ahhh, yes, the Wii Shop Channel. That song brings back memories. Well, all good things come to an end I suppose. It had a good run. I doubt many people are even using their Wii's these days. I remember it was made possible to access the Wii Shop Channel from the Dolphin Emulator a little while ago, so that probably gave a lot more traffic than it had seen in years.

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Yeah, there's a lot to talk about here. 

 

This is the biggest reason that I don't like buying games digitally. I'm always going to support physical releases for the games that I care about, not just so that I can play them in the future, but also because it's important to make sure that games don't disappear forever once they're removed from digital stores. I'm sure I'll get people in this thread who disagree with me, but I do think that games are a form of art and it's so important that we do our best to pass down as much of the history as possible. As digital stores stop services and consoles get older and more broken, it's important that we move towards emulating those games. If we don't, they could become lost forever. 

 

Because seriously, you can't trust services to always give you access to your digital content in the future and you definitely can't trust companies to preserve these games and rerelease them. Just look at what happened with Konami and Silent Hill. They didn't even have the complete code for Silent Hill 2 and 3 and the remaster ended up horrendous because they didn't realize you can reverse engineer PS2 discs. Even worse, look at Nintendo. They downloaded roms off of the internet and resold them to people on the virtual console. People can talk all they want about how piracy is bad, but obviously there's a lot to be said about Nintendo benefiting off of the work that pirates have done here. 

 

All I'm saying is that the dedicated video game community will always care more about the longevity of games than the companies who create and sell them. It's important to understand that when you buy games digitally that you don't have access to them as long as you might like. If you don't care about having older games, that's fine, but those of us who do really don't like the idea of having our collections stripped away. The only way to make sure that games are truly kept forever is to archive the code and emulate the console. 

 

 

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I don't think I ever loaded up the Wii Shop Channel o.o. The Wii was so easy to pirate that I had all my digital stuff installed through WADs (it was also at a time when I was still a kid on highschool, so no moneyz).

 

Anyway, it sucks for those who have bought stuff digitally. One day all that is gonna be taken away from them. Hopefully starting with the Switch they will get with the times and tie digital purchases to accounts.

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4 minutes ago, AndresLionheart said:

I don't think I ever loaded up the Wii Shop Channel o.o. The Wii was so easy to pirate that I had all my digital stuff installed through WADs (it was also at a time when I was still a kid on highschool, so no moneyz).

 

Anyway, it sucks for those who have bought stuff digitally. One day all that is gonna be taken away from them. Hopefully starting with the Switch they will get with the times and tie digital purchases to accounts.

Never a good idea to admitting illegal pirating within the statute of limitations

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1 hour ago, SnowxSakura said:

Never a good idea to admitting illegal pirating within the statute of limitations

My country does not care. We don't even have the Wii officially released here.

After the N64 Nintendo abandoned my country and just came back now with the Switch. With outrageous prices that no one is going to pay so we are still importing. Which means they will end up leaving again soon.

Over here people openly sell the use of their digital games on PSN, for example. I don't know exactly what they do but its there in the main online place to sell.

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3 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

 

Maybe in a couple of decades... for the 60765057th time, there's only one PSN for everything...

That doesn't mean services can't be shut down on the PS3 and Vita to the point where it doesn't even matter if they can connect to PSN, because there won't be much of anything you can do. Similar to how it is with the Wii currently, you can still connect it to the internet, but you can only really access the Wii shop (for now) and the internet browser. Same also goes for the PSP, there's not a lot you can do online with it any more at this point in time.

 

I don't think this is a realistic scenario any time in the foreseeable by any means, but the fact is, one day, all online services on the PS3 and Vita will cease. As they will on future consoles as well. Nothing lasts forever, especially when it comes to online services.

 

3 hours ago, tpepper1985 said:

 

Good point on the 360, XBOX have already got thier bases covered here really, I know it's only a fraction of the 360 Library but alot of the big games are on there. I'm still holding out hope that Sony will maybe let you stream games you own a digital copy of from PSNow without having to rent it, this would be one solution they could implement in the future maybe as a PS+ feature.

It's one of the few things I actually prefer about Xbox One over PS4. Yeah, it doesn't have all the games, but they're steadily adding to it. I still don't really get why we don't have PSOne classics on the PS4 either.

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Interesting, I actually thought the Wii's eShop had already closed...

 

I never bought much on the Wii, didn't need VC as I had a SNES and I wasn't into downloading original digital games until later. The one game I can recall that I downloaded on the Wii, World Of Goo, I already have on the Switch.

 

On 29/09/2017 at 10:37 AM, tpepper1985 said:

But in reality, in 10 years time I will probably never touch games that are 20 years old anymore ... Maybe only to show my kids how things were "In my day." Time will tell I guess!

 

Don't know how old you are but speaking as a guy in his thirties, I still have a SNES hooked up to the television in my mancave and I do still play on it from time to time, those are games that are over twenty years old.

 

I feel like people who are in their early twenties or younger right now are more accustomed to staying with current games, and the older people tend to keep enjoying the games from before the current century.

 

On 29/09/2017 at 3:12 PM, Lance_87 said:

 

Maybe in a couple of decades... for the 60765057th time, there's only one PSN for everything...

 

You'll probably hit 70 million times as well. I mean, I KNOW that this is true but I find it still hard to grasp that the PS3 won't be disconnected at some point.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Wii U, 3DS and Switch are linked to the same eShop database.

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1 hour ago, BillyHorrible said:

Interesting, I actually thought the Wii's eShop had already closed...

 

I never bought much on the Wii, didn't need VC as I had a SNES and I wasn't into downloading original digital games until later. The one game I can recall that I downloaded on the Wii, World Of Goo, I already have on the Switch.

 

 

Don't know how old you are but speaking as a guy in his thirties, I still have a SNES hooked up to the television in my mancave and I do still play on it from time to time, those are games that are over twenty years old.

 

I feel like people who are in their early twenties or younger right now are more accustomed to staying with current games, and the older people tend to keep enjoying the games from before the current century.

 

 

You'll probably hit 70 million times as well. I mean, I KNOW that this is true but I find it still hard to grasp that the PS3 won't be disconnected at some point.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Wii U, 3DS and Switch are linked to the same eShop database.

 

Well, they're still releasing small PS3 games, so it's not a problem for now... and Nintendo lives in a different world when it comes to networks/shops... heh, even the 360 stuff has been around for more time than PS3 and it's still there. IMHO there's just too much stuff to justify a complete disconnection.

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I'm surprised it lasted more then ten years! I really have to purchase some of the WiiWare for preservation sake since I can still access the channel on my Wii. I just used it today and their's still plenty to choose from. I'm going to miss it :( 

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38 minutes ago, Terra said:

I'm surprised it lasted more then ten years! I really have to purchase some of the WiiWare for preservation sake since I can still access the channel on my Wii. I just used it today and their's still plenty to choose from. I'm going to miss it :( 

 

Actually buying new stuff has not been possible for years, only thung you can still do is download stuff you have previously bought. Don't know why the OP says March 2018, to my knowledge it's already impossible.

 

3 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

 

Well, they're still releasing small PS3 games, so it's not a problem for now... and Nintendo lives in a different world when it comes to networks/shops... heh, even the 360 stuff has been around for more time than PS3 and it's still there. IMHO there's just too much stuff to justify a complete disconnection.

 

Mèh, purchases were still linked to a console for the Wii eShop so all this means is that people who still have a Wii should download their purchases somewhere before 2019. That's a lot of advance notice.

Edited by BillyHorrible
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1 minute ago, BillyHorrible said:

 

Actually buying new stuff has not been possible for years, only thung you can still do is download stuff you have previously bought. Don't know why the OP says March 2018, to my knowledge it's already impossible.

 

 

Mèh, purchases were still linked to a console for the Wii eShop so all this means is that people who still have a Wii should download their purchases somewhere before 2019. That's a lot of advance notice.

Really? That's a shame :( . I was able to download the free stuff but you saved me from spending $20. The only three games that I purchased on my Wii were Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 64, and Kirby's Adventure back in 2008. I guess those will have to do for now. My Wii is reaching it's ten year anniversary so I'll make sure to watch for any other free downloads.

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