In a post titled “Wii U & Nintendo 3DS eShop Discontinuation,” Nintendo just announced that in March 2023 the online storefronts for both systems will be ceasing operations.
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But in a practical sense the closures will begin a lot sooner than that:
In terms of people playing and enjoying the games they already own, Nintendo says:
All of this is expected stuff. The 3DS is 11 years old this year and the Wii U ten, so digital store closures were always going to happen sooner or later. What’s shitty about these closures in particular, though, is that both shopfronts offered users the ability to purchase and then own many of Nintendo’s greatest ever titles, something you’re now largely unable to do ever since the company switched to a subscription model with Nintendo Switch Online.
The company saw this coming. When the blog post was first made, an associated FAQ had the following exchange:
“We currently have no plans to offer classic content in other ways,” is an incredibly shitty thing to read, because under zero circumstances is a subscription-based model an acceptable substitution to actually owning a game.
