Though Nintendo is often known among the gaming community as creating immensely fun games with lighter themes and a family-friendly nature, the company has also been known to get into some battles with fans. There's the back and forth between the Super Mario creators and YouTubers, as the latter will often try to include footage of Nintendo games or soundtracks in their videos. This resulted in Nintendo blocking over 1300 videos on the platform. Now, though, there's a new reason fans have become annoyed at the gaming giant.
It has seemed of late that Nintendo was going all-in on the Switch, as the company announced it was shutting down the online shops for the Wii U and 3DS in February of this year. Alongside the shutdown of those online stores, it seemed to many fans that the Wii and DSi shops were also being shut down, but whereas the Wii U and 3DS stores are planned to be shut down next year, fans found that the Wii shop was unexpectedlly unavailable to them on March 16.
This led to mass confusion among Nintendo fans. Some believed that Nintendo had just decided to remove the shops without informing fans, while others thought the services may simply be experiencing some issues. While fans debated what the reason was behind the random shutdown, many were disappointed to find that the games and content they'd once downloaded were unavailable to be re-downloaded. This meant that some of the best titles and content exclusive to the Wii and original DS could be lost forever.
Nintendo has released a couple of updates on the situation since then, with the first stating that it is possible now for fans to re-download content on the DSi shop and then transfer it to the 3DS system, with the same being said for Wii and Wii U content. Nintendo did seem to emphasize that the ability for fans to re-download content and transfer it is a temporary one, though, acknowledging that these older stores will be closing shortly, cutting off many fans from some of the best games the Wii and DSi have to offer.
Nintendo's most recent update also confirms that the Wii and DSi shops are "undergoing maintenance" and that the company will "provide an update at a later date." For nostalgic Nintendo fans, this is quite the blow, though for those looking to the future, it seems Nintendo has a packed 2022 for Switch releases.
Source: Kotaku