Wii U and Nintendo 3DS eShops shutting down in 2023, frustrating fans

Nintendo will close the online stores for its Wii U console and Nintendo 3DS handheld in “late March 2023,” the company announced Tuesday. It will be impossible to purchase digitally for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U systems from these stores (called the Nintendo eShop).

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.

Even though it may sound far away, Nintendo will be making it harder to buy games and other content through the Wii U eShops by 2022. Nintendo will stop supporting credit cards to be used for funds transfers from a Nintendo eShop Wii U account or 3DS account. Nintendo announced that it would be impossible to add funds using a Nintendo eShop card to an account on Nintendo eShop Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS families of systems on August 29.

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.

This is why? 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. Many native Wii U or 3DS games will no longer be accessible digitally, and the closure of the eShop on these systems will mean the end to Virtual Console. Nintendo’s current implementation of offering classic games on Nintendo Switch comes in the form of the subscription-based Nintendo Switch Online, which offers a meager number of NES and Super NES titles — as well as Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games — compared to the Virtual Console libraries on previous-generation Nintendo platforms.

Nintendo acknowledged those concerns in its FAQ with the following question and answer — which it deleted from the support site after the notice went live and fans called it out:

Many classic Nintendo 3DS games will no longer be sold anywhere once it’s impossible to buy software from Nintendo eShop for Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems. Do you plan to make these classic games accessible in another way? If you don’t, why not? Doesn’t Nintendo have an obligation to preserve its classic games by continually making them available for purchase?

Our Nintendo Switch Online memberships include over 130 classic titles. These games are available in expanding libraries that support legacy systems. These games often have online play added to them.

It is our opinion that this method makes classic content accessible to all players. This allows both new and old players to not only locate games that are familiar or heard of, but also other enjoyable games.

At the moment, we do not plan to provide classic content in any other way.

Wii U eShop features more than 300 Virtual Console games, and the Nintendo 3DS eShop provides 191.

Fan outcry seems unlikely to sway Nintendo’s decision to end support for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS eShops, based on similar previous shutdowns. Support was ended for the Wii Shop in 2019 after Nintendo closed down its channel. Super Mario MakerOn Wii U 2021, despite the largely negative reaction to those decisions.