In somewhat sad news this morning, the eShops for the 3DS and Wii U are permanently closed for business, officially. As anyone who owns or owns one of these devices knows, for the last decade, both of these systems used the eShop as their primary source of games and the only way to buy digital games.
In February of last year, Nintendo announced that the eShops mentioned above would close in March this year. Unfortunately, that day has arrived. As of this morning, anyone who tried to access one of these eShops will be greeted with a message saying that downloading new content is no longer possible.
Content no longer available includes free demos, themes, or paid content like the Nintendo Badge Arcade. However, all is not entirely lost. Nintendo has confirmed that online play for either of the consoles won’t be affected, and users will still be able to receive updates and re-download any content they already own.
Over the past few weeks, some 3DS and Wii U users have been flooding the internet to show themselves buying massive quantities of games to pay their final tributes to a system many grew up using in the name of game preservation.
An example is the well-known YouTuber, The Completionist, who went viral last week for spending thousands of dollars buying every 3DS and Wii U eShop game before their eShops closed. Unless you could drop big bucks, the reality is that as of this morning, any of the 3DS and Wii U exclusive titles you do not already own will no longer be available to play by any official means.
The closure of these two stores is genuinely disappointing. However, it’s unlikely that this will be the last time I report on an official digital game store closing its doors to gamers.