Wii And DSi Shops Are Back After Four Months Offline

thegamer.com:

The Wii Shop Channel and Nintendo DSi Shop are both back online. The two shops went offline without explanation back in March, leading Nintendo users of both legacy consoles concerned that they might have missed their opportunity to back up their older games.

The Wii Shop Channel was shut down back in 2019, preventing any new games from being released or purchased by users, but the software itself was still available for users to download any previously purchased games. The same was true for the Nintendo DSi Store, which was shut down in 2017. However, both stores went offline without any warning.

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Nintendo had previously stated that support for the Wii and DSi Shops would end at a future date, but users believed Nintendo would at least provide a few days' notice. Then, on March 20, they were both just gone.

Now they're both back. Eurogamer was told about a week after the stores' disappearances that both were "undergoing maintenance" and would return at a later date. Then yesterday, just as suddenly as they were taken offline, both stores came back and are letting users download their old Wii and DSi titles.

After that scare, Wii and DSi enthusiasts should probably download and back up their games to an SD card just in case the stores go offline again.

Nintendo has been slowly removing support for its popular legacy consoles. Both the Wii U and 3DS stores will soon stop users from making any new purchases. The stores stopped accepting new funds as of May 23, but users could still add funds to their Wii U and 3DS Network IDs by purchasing Nintendo eShop cards until August 29. Game codes are also still redeemable for the Wii U and 3DS until March of next year, after