The Nintendo eShop for the Wii U and 3DS shuts down for good today

Just as announced last year, Nintendo has now begun winding down online services for the eShop on the Wii U and 3DS systems. Support for most payment methods was dropped last year and now, it is time for the eShop for both consoles to go offline for good. 

At 5PM PDT this evening, the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS will shut down for good. One YouTuber made headlines last week after spending $22,000 buying all of the available digital games before the servers go down.

When Nintendo announced the shut down, the company said that this is “part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time”. At this point, most customers have moved on to the Nintendo Switch, which has now sold more than 100 million units and surpassed the Wii in lifetime sales.

While you can no longer use the eShop on the Wii U or 3DS after today, you will still be able to redownload games you own and titles with multiplayer functions will still work normally, as long as the publisher of that game has not shut down online services.

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KitGuru Says: This was bound to happen eventually, but it is always a shame to see an old console store go down. With the Switch now having many emulators, hopefully we can see some of the classic games that were available on the 3DS and Wii U on the Switch.

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