This means that Nintendo’s Switch predecessor will disappear from the Japanese company for good, as its digital store has already been shut down.

Nintendo’s service has been shut down not because of lack of interest, but because it has run out of the parts needed to repair the Wii U. As a result, console owners can no longer send their broken consoles to the big N for repair. It is somewhat understandable that the Japanese company has reached this point, as the Wii U has significantly more complex hardware than both the Wii and the Switch.

Let’s not forget that this platform had a separate controller with a display, the Game Pad, which was essentially a tablet. This was often prone to breakdowns, but was never sold separately by Nintendo, so stock quickly ran out, and the more years that passed after the Wii U was replaced, the tighter the Japanese company’s reserves became. It’s no wonder, then, that just seven years after the Wii U’s retirement (the Switch’s sales have far surpassed those of its predecessor), it’s game over in this regard.

The Wii U’s online segment was shut down in April of this year. This was preceded by the shutdown of the eShop, but that was already done in March 2023, when the Big N shut down the 3DS online store alongside the Wii U. When this happened, Nintendo claimed that it only applied to in-game online features, so it was possible to download updates and already purchased games and DLC “for the foreseeable future”. Except that with the Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdown, about 1,000 digital-only games are no longer available. (And that’s why we argue that game preservation is NOT negligible!)

This also meant the end of the Virtual Console. So there’s only one way to access old games, but a much smaller list of them, because the VC had multiple platforms available to players, Switch Online now only offers the NES, SNES, Mega Drive, N64 foursome.

Source: VGC