I'm a little surprised that they're keeping up online play. I would think that would be costing them more to run than the shops, since there is no sub fee. I s'pose that could also be a separate announcement to be made within the coming months though.
I suspect it's much like Sony's initial justification for shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores: they didn't want to pay to keep updating the credit card processing and security features to keep the stores compatible with modern payment standards.
Yeah, I imagine it is since on the Wii you can still redownload games you own if you need to, despite that systems online store being shut down for 3 years now. So keeping the servers running that contain the games must not be that much of a hassle for Nintendo, it's just they don't feel these systems are worth dealing with credit card companies anymore.
I'm honestly surprised they kept the Wii U eShop as open as long as they did. When it's last major title came out in early 2017 and they've ported about 99% of it's exclusives, I'd figured it would last until 2021 at most. Of course it's not that big a deal for me since pretty much every Wii U game that I hadn't bought yet has now been ported to the Switch.
The 3DS eShop closing though is kind of a dick move. The system lasted 2 years longer then the Wii U, and has a userbase that's 6 times larger and yet they'll shut it down at the same time. Plus the 3DS has a much larger selection of games that are still exclusive to just the 3DS, unlike the Wii U that's ported almost all of its must owns. Then again I've pretty much bought all the 3DS games I had an interest in by now so it's not a huge deal to me personally, but that's still pretty unfair to shut it down at the same time as the Wii U when the 3DS had more support and a longer lifespan.
Then again Nintendo has the sales numbers that we don't see, and I'd imagine with Switch sales really exploding the last 2 years, the 3DS eShop hasn't looked that hot. I mean, even on the internet forums that are more hardcore then the average consumer, many were saying they stopped playing their 3DS by the end of 2017, hence the anger over some key 3DS titles that still got released for it after the Switch came out. I mean there does come a point in asking how many people are still playing these old systems, let alone buying games for them. If many were already over the system by the end of 2017, how many are still going to be buying games at the end of 2022?