Topic: Nintendo Announces Plans For Closure Of Wii Shop

[Shaymin]

Time to beg for the shop music to be ported to the Switch.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/45561/nintendo-announces-plans-for-closure-of-wii-shop

The Wii Shop will close in 2019 following over twelve years of service.

Nintendo has outlined the plans for the shop's closure today on their website. Wii Points will continue to be sold on the Wii and Wii U (in Wii mode) until March 26, 2018 and they can be used until January 30, 2019  at which point purchasing will be cut off. A third phase will follow at a time to be announced where redownloading and transferring to the Wii U will also be cut off.

Online play for Wii games was terminated in 2014 following the end of an agreement with GameSpy, while video-on-demand services such as Netflix will continue to function as usual (though the applications will not be downloadable to systems again). The DSi Shop closed earlier this year, though a supermajority of DSiWare was transported to the 3DS eShop upon its launch at E3 2011.

[Lemonade]

Im more surprised this has taken so long to happen.

I would be very interested to know how many people sales still go through the Wii Shop.

[KITT 10K]

I didn't even realize that it was still open. (It's still ashame, I had a lot of good times from it.)

[Mop it up]

After the DSiWare shop closed, I figured the Wii shop wouldn't be far behind. It's like the end of an era!

[Khushrenada]

I didn't even realize that it was still open. (It's still ashame, I had a lot of good times from it.)

Nintendo was still holding sales on it even this year around E3, IIRC. That's how I remembered it was still open.

[stevey]

What's the point of closing it?

[Khushrenada]

My guess is licensing agreements. Kind of like how the Rock Band music store has some songs no longer available because of a limited time agreement. Chances are companies probably didn't give Nintendo an indefinite agreement to forever sell the games on the Wii Shop. Plus, there is probably still a cost to maintain that shop and perhaps the revenue has dropped below a threshold they feel is reasonable to keep running that server and shop.

And shutting down the Wii Shop and later Wii U Shop means customers have to buy a Switch or 3DS to purchase older games if they want to use that as a way to make customers move on to the newer consoles.