January 30, 2019 will mark the day at the Nintendo Wii’s Shop Channel officially closes. The service has been running for 12 years until this date. This was a shutdown that many gamers have known about for quite some time as the original announcement of the shop’s closure came back in September 2017. The closure of the shop will also affect the Wii U’s emulator as well. WiiWare and the Virtual Console stores are also being shut down.
If you wish to redownload any titles you have previously purchased, you will need to do so before the store officially goes offline. Nintendo will not leave gamers stranded, though as they stated that a Wii to Wii U transfer tool will become available but they did not state when that tool will be completed.
In addition to the Wii Shop, today also marks the end of the Wii’s support for streaming video. This means that services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video will no longer function on the Wii console. These services are set to end on January 31.
Farewell and so long, Wii Shop! Was fun while it lasted!
Source: Gamasutra
