Nintendo Wii was the most successful console in the past decade for the company which struggled a lot until the Switch came to their rescue.
It was a revolutionary device for the time with motion controllers that none of its competitors, be it the Xbox 360 or the PS3 had.
Finally, the time has come to bid goodbye to a great era of gaming as Nintendo has decided to close the Wii shop permanently. The company opines that they are now in a new era of gaming powered by the Nintendo Switch. In order to focus better on the current generation games, digital store and overall customer experience, they have to restrict their older services in which Wii is the most prominent of them all.
With a huge collection of game library, the Wii shop supports both the Wii and the Wii U consoles. Nintendo in their official blog has confirmed that they will shut down the services on January 31st, 2019 which is roughly a year to go. It gives enough time for players to spend all the points they have gathered in the shop and choose not to add any more in the near future.
How Wii Points Work?
The development team confirmed that players will still be able to add points to their account if they like to. The window will be open until March 27th, 2018 after which there is no way to buy any new games on the Wii or Wii U stores. All of them will be locked down so that the Nintendo team has enough time to slowly phase out their services.
They also confirmed that the 1-year period has been provided so that you could download backup copies for all the games you own. Ardent Nintendo Wii and Wii U gamers may have a huge collection of titles purchased on the Wii Shop. All these games will be removed from the official servers and this is the only time to download them all so that you don’t miss out on your favorite titles.
The services for WiiWare games, Virtual Console will also be removed by 2019. Most gamers are fine with the decision as fans have already jumped to the Switch console and are looking forward to more AAA titles on the hybrid device that works great so far. But, it’s officially the time to say goodbye to Wii, the best and game changing console of a generation.