Nintendo shutting down Wii U, Nintendo 3DS eShops and frustrating fans

polygon.com:

Nintendo will close the online stores for its Wii U console and Nintendo 3DS handheld in “late March 2023,” the company announced Tuesday. After those stores, called the Nintendo eShop, shut down, it will no longer be possible to make digital purchases for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS family of systems.

The Wii U and 3DS eShops’ closure also means that game demos and other free content will no longer be available to download as of March 2023.

While that 2023 date may seem far off, Nintendo will make it more difficult to purchase games and other content from the Wii U and 3DS eShops in 2022. On May 23 of this year, Nintendo will end support for adding funds to a Nintendo eShop account on Wii U and 3DS using a credit card. And on August 29, it will no longer be possible to use a Nintendo eShop Card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, Nintendo said in a support notice.

After the March 2023 shutdown, “and for the foreseeable future,” Nintendo says it will still be possible to redownload games and DLC, receive software updates, and play games online on Wii U and 3DS.

Why is this happening? Nintendo attempted to answer that in an FAQ posted alongside the support notice, saying, “This is part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time.”

That answer is not sitting well with many consumers, who fired back at the company on social media that the closures will have a detrimental impact on many games’ availability. In addition to many native Wii U and 3DS games that are only available digitally (or are prohibitively expensive in physical form), the eShop closures will also mean the end of Virtual Console on those systems.