Nintendo Announces End of Wii U, 3DS Support on Nintendo eShop
Support for the 3DS and Wii U eShops will end in 2023, Nintendo has announced, preventing people from adding currency to their accounts and purchasing new games. These changes won't affect the Nintendo Switch's eShop infrastructure, and the 3DS and Wii systems will still retain their online functionality for the foreseeable future.
The Nintendo 3DS only managed to sell half of the units of its predecessor, but it was still an important system for a number of reasons. The failure of the Wii U to find an audience meant that the 3DS propped Nintendo up for years. The 3DS hosted a number of popular Pokémon games, brought the Super Smash Bros. franchise to handhelds, and dragged Nintendo into the digital age in a way that the DS/Wii never did. All good things must come to an end, and for the 3DS/Wii U, that end was the Switch. As of Nintendo's most recent financial report, the Switch has outsold the Wii and PS1, making it one of Nintendo's best-selling systems of all time. The runaway momentum of the Switch left the 3DS and the Wii U in the dust, and it was only a matter of time before Nintendo started closing up shop for those systems.
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Nintendo has laid out the schedule for the end of the 3DS/Wii U eShops in a post on the official Nintendo of America Twitter page, which is further explained on the official Nintendo website. The 3DS/Wii U eShops will gradually lose support over the next year, preventing people from being able to purchase games (including free ones) and adding currency to their accounts. The eShops will officially close sometime in late March, 2023, when "it will no longer be possible to make Nintendo eShop purchases fo the Wii U and
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