The original Wii was a massive success for Nintendo, being one of only a few consoles that managed to sell over 100 million units in its lifetime. While there are still many people playing Wii today, Nintendo will begin shutting down it services in early 2019.
This will begin with the Wii Shop Channel, which the company announced will officially be shutting down on January 31, 2019. Also, users won’t be able to add Wii Points to their account after March 27, 2018. Being able to re-download prior purchases or use the Wii System Transfer are safe for now, but the company did mention that those will be shutting down at some point after the aforementioned dates.
It’s worth noting that even though the Wii Shop Channel will be shutting down, all WiiWare and Virtual Console titles will be playable as long as they are not erased from the console.
The Wii had a good run, but it all has to come to an end sooner or later. Now that the Switch is out and doing very well, it’s only natural that support for the previous consoles will begin to be shut down. It’s good that they announced that they were being shut down so far in advance, as that should give everyone plenty of time to get their downloads sorted out.
Wii originally launched in 2006, and was a big departure from the consoles Nintendo had released prior to that point. It was the first console to introduce motion controls to gaming, with the “Wiimote” allowing players to swing the controller around to perform a variety of actions. This new technology definitely didn’t launch in the best state that it could have, as the company would then release Wii Motion Plus several years later that made things much more responsive. Even still, Wii Sports ended up becoming one of the most played games of all time and is still enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike to this day.
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