Nintendo Has Still Not Addressed the Issue Publicly
This current situation with Nintendo is a bit of a mystery. For the past few days, there’s been a service that has been down: the Wii, and DSi shop channels.
Currently, this appears to be a global situation. As in, this has occurred not only in the North American regions but also within places such as Europe as well. There are no error messages given when access is attempted, which is the most baffling part- all that happens is a blank screen.
It’s a fairly odd situation, as no warning was given by Nintendo, and currently, there has been no word if the shops will even come back. As Eurogamer pointed out, this has been going on since March 16, 2022, making it four days as of this writing since this situation has arisen.
Though, it is worth noting that no one has been able to buy anything from the Wii store since 2019, and the DSi store since 2017. Still, there was no announcement or warning. This means that those that still use the service have not had the time to download difficult-to-find games from the server, or otherwise ensure there was access to their past purchases.
Funny enough though, if looking through the help pages, there does seem to be some indication of plans for both shop channels to go down at some point. For example, it reads this on the DSi store page: “The ability to re-download purchased content or transfer content to a Nintendo 3DS family system will continue after the Nintendo DSi Shop closure for an as-yet-unspecified amount of time. If you are thinking of transferring your DSiWare content to a Nintendo 3DS family system, we encourage you to do so at your earliest convenience while the service is still available.”
And on the Wii shop channel help page, it reads as: “However, for the time being you may continue to re-download content you have purchased or transfer that content from a Wii system to a Wii U system. Be aware that these features will eventually end at a future date.”
So, we did know that there would be a closure, but not that it would be at this time. Still, there have been reports from players using third-party tools that they have been able to access and even download games. This indicates that the servers are not down completely, just the storefronts. Whether this means the two stores are down for good though, is currently unknown.