Nintendo has been ‘waiting for Wii U and 3DS shutdown’ for some time, claims former employee
Nintendo has been planning the recently announced shutdown of digital game purchases on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS systems for some time, according to a former Nintendo employee.
According to Nintendo Life, who spoke to the former employee under the promise of anonymity, “internally, Nintendo Co Ltd has been waiting for that day since 2014 based on sales.
According to the employee, “Nintendo looks at the first 2 years as the indicator of when to start packing it in with a console.”
The employee went on to talk about the company’s approach to repairing old systems
“We started talking Wii U repair and replacement numbers about a year prior to the Switch launch,” they said. “Nintendo of America was nearly out of optical drives for the repair/replace program… and [by around] 2016 you could eyeball how many were left.
“NCL [Nintendo’s main Japanese company] had a good supply, so they moved that inventory to NOA so we could handle repairs at least until the Switch launched.
“So the End-of-Life program at least for the console began before the NX launch.”
Up to 1,000 digital-only games will no longer be available for purchase when Nintendo closes the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores next year, VGC analysis shows.
Although users will still be able to redownload their previous purchases for the foreseeable future, from March 2023 it will no longer be possible to buy games on the WiiU and 3DS online marketplaces, Nintendo announced this week.
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