Nintendo closing Wii Shop Channel
Wii and Wii U users will lose access to online storefront in 2019, sale of Wii Points currency to stop in March
It's a prolonged last call for the Wii Shop Channel, as Nintendo has announced plans to shut down the digital storefront for Wii and Wii U owners (the latter through backward compatibility) in 2019.
"Now that customers have shifted to Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS family systems, we plan to focus our efforts in those areas," the company explained on its US support site. "As such, the Wii Shop Channel will close in 2019 after over twelve years of operation. We sincerely thank our loyal customers for supporting the Wii Shop Channel on their Wii systems."
While the storefront won't be shut down entirely for over a year, Nintendo is going to remove certain functionality piecemeal, so customers looking to make a final purchase may need to act much sooner than that. For example, Nintendo will only allow users to add Wii Points currency to their accounts until March 26, 2018. The ability to actually use those points to purchase WiiWare and Virtual Console titles (or to download free software) will end on January 31, 2019. Finally, the ability to redownload previously purchased titles will be terminated and the entire Wii Shop Channel shut down at an as yet undetermined point in 2019.
The Wii Shop Channel has been running since the Wii first launched in November of 2006.