
While many of us treasure the broad range of games that modern gaming brings us through download stores, we're regularly reminded that these platforms — and the creations they host — are finite. That came into focus recently when Nintendo announced the timeline for closing both the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores. While a number of games from that generation are available on Switch or other systems, there are also a number of exclusives and less common games that, next year, will theoretically be off the market forever.
A lot of the focus has been on how players and consumers feel about this, and feelings have run high. We decided, though, to reach out to some publishers and developers that had notable releases on these stores, to get their views on the upcoming closures.
We posed the same set of questions to the following:
- Manfred Lunzner of Shin'en Multimedia - FAST Racing NEO, Art of Balance, Nano Assault Ex, Nano Assault NEO, Fun! Fun! Minigolf TOUCH! and Art of Balance TOUCH!
- Jools Watsham of Atooi - Mutant Mudds, Bomb Monkey, Xeodrifter, Mutant Mudds Super Challenge and Chicken Wiggle
- Stuart Ryall of Mojo Bones - Siesta Fiesta
- Martin Pichlmair of Broken Rules - Chasing Aurora
- Dylan Cuthbert of Q-Games - X-Scape, Starship Defense, Trajectile, Art Style: DIGIDRIVE
- Chris Chau of CIRCLE Entertainment - Fairune, Adventure Bar Story, Quell Reflect, Parascientific Escape Cruise in the Distant Seas and more.

Were you notified by Nintendo of the eShop closures prior to the announcement?
Jools Watsham, Atooi: No, I don't recall receiving any information about the eShop closure prior to the public announcement.
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: Yes. Nintendo have always maintained communication with us re: any important developer-related news.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: I can't recall if I received a notification, however I wasn't surprised they decided to shut down the 3DS eShop
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: No, we haven’t received any notification from Nintendo, but they aren’t obliged to as our contract and royalties period is over. (the games are pretty old now!)
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: I can't answer because I'm not sure!
Had you anticipated the closure beforehand, or given much thought to when it might occur?
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: I think it was predictable that it would have been closed down sooner or later.
Martin Pichlmair, Broken Rules: I think I never actively thought about this development but neither am I surprised. It’s the logical conclusion of how online stores work in the moment.
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: We had considered the possibility of the store closing (especially with the launch/success of new hardware) but we didn’t really give much thought to when this might happen.
Of course it's sad to see them vanish, on the other side every developer can decide if its worthwhile to put extra work into these games and make them available somewhere else.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: No, I hadn't. But I was fully aware this will eventually happen, like the DSi Shop.
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: We expected that this would happen sooner or later, as it did with WiiWare in the past.
Jools Watsham, Atooi: I suppose it was inevitable that the 3DS and Wii U eShops would close at some point, but I hadn't given it much thought, honestly.
How do you feel about your titles not being available to purchase on these platforms?
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: I’m saddened by it of course, but it cannot be helped as the platforms they run on are quite old. I wish there was some way for people to still buy and play these games.
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: In our case it's 6 titles that we will lose (Fast Racing Neo, Art of Balance Wii U, Nano Assault Ex, Nano Assault Neo, Fun Fun Minigolf Touch & Art of Balance Touch). Of course it's sad to see them vanish, on the other side every developer can decide if its worthwhile to put extra work into these games and make them available somewhere else. Whether these older titles would get an audience again is a question that has to be answered very differently for each title. For 'Art of Balance' we decided to create a Switch version some time ago because we felt it really deserved to make another round on a new system.
Jools Watsham, Atooi: It is sad to know the end of the 3DS and Wii U era is coming to a definitive close in the near future. I always hope for them to endure. But, from a business perspective, it makes sense, honestly. Sales of our games on the 3DS eShop have been very low for the past few years, with most people's focus being on the Switch. I expect a lot of the reasoning for Nintendo to close the 3DS and Wii U eShops is to shift their resources to other areas within the company that produce money for them.
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: To be truthful, it’s mixed feelings. In an ideal world – and as gamers first and foremost – we’d love to see all platforms/games/hardware stay live and fully supported for the foreseeable future: I think most gamers would. But we also have to be honest and realistic about the finite nature of digital sales/stores from a business POV.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: To be honest, 3DS sales reduced a lot, the revenue right now is almost nothing unless we have a sale. So it's acceptable for me.

Will these store closures have a financial impact on your studio?
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: Yes of course. These older eShop titles paid our Shin'en office rent for 2021. Though I want to mention that our office is the same since 1999 and not that big!
Jools Watsham, Atooi: Very little impact.
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: Siesta Fiesta was always intended as a 3DS exclusive, so it’s more disappointing that the game won’t be available for future players, rather than it having a large financial consequence.
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: No, because we are past the end of our agreement.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: It won't, because we have adjusted our business model and reduced expenses recently, so now it's balanced. For example COVID made a larger financial impact compared with this.
Have you noticed a change in download numbers since the announcement?
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: The last sales showed an increase of about 300% for some of our older eShop titles. So it seems that people take their chance!
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: This isn’t something we’ve assessed just yet.
Jools Watsham, Atooi: Yes, there has been a small bump in sales. Perhaps it would have been a larger increase if our games weren't also available on Switch as well as a physical 3DS release called Atooi Collection, published by Limited Run Games, which features all five of our 3DS eShop titles: Mutant Mudds, Bomb Monkey, Xeodrifter, Mutant Mudds Super Challenge, and Chicken Wiggle.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: I have not seen any change yet.
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: We haven’t had access to download numbers since the end of the agreement period.

Do you have thoughts on the game preservation aspect of these stores closing; if so, how do you think it could be handled differently?
Manfred Linzner, Shin'en: From a game and developer side I would like to have these shops running forever. From Nintendo's side i understand that there may be reasons to decide against that. Perhaps it's a chance for publishers like Super Rare Games, Limited Run Games or Strictly Limited Games to make collections of such games available?
Jools Watsham, Atooi: Due to the unique and varied nature of Nintendo's hardware platforms, from the unique controller of the Nintendo 64 to the dual screens of the DS and 3DS, it is always going to be difficult to preserve the Nintendo experience for future enjoyment. I don't know what the ideal solution is, but I do feel it is important to try to bring those experiences forward. A lot of the effort is going to fall into the hands of the developers. We will continue to adapt our titles to newer platforms so fans and new players can continue to enjoy them.
Dylan Cuthbert, Q-Games: I’m not sure how differently it could be handled, apart from maybe it would be cool if Nintendo made the games available in some kind of emulated environment on the Switch. Games like X-Scape deserve to be played more! Starship Defense is also a super little game with tons of character and class.
Martin Pichlmair, Broken Rules: This is such an interesting problem. On one hand I’m personally very much in the “all things must pass” department that does not spend a lot of thought on the loss of culture through time. Most media ages badly anyway and is better forgotten. Plus, we keep making new, often better, things.
At the same time it is so that we designed a system (our specific interpretation of digital capitalism) so that some cultural goods got an expiration date. Given their dependence on specific hardware, games are more affected by this than any other media I can think of, except maybe media art & online art. You can still read a 100 year old book because it doesn’t require much preserved infrastructure. So we lose some kinds of culture whereas others survive much longer. I guess architecture and cave paintings win this race.
Ideally I would like to see a world where we can release the source code to our games to the world and preservation efforts have an easy time wrapping them in emulators, loading them onto carefully maintained museum copies of old hardware, and analysing them for later studies. Alas, we can’t do that because we link to different kinds of proprietary software.
Ideally I would like to see a world where we can release the source code to our games to the world and preservation efforts have an easy time wrapping them in emulators.
Stuart Ryall, Mojo Bones: It’s a really important discussion. The medium of video games is relatively new when compared to traditional art, writing, music and film. We also need to consider that our medium is technologically driven, which makes preservation more challenging than other art forms, especially when the technology driving it moves so fast. This topic also becomes a lot more important as we move towards the ‘games-as-service’ model. Live updates are great at keeping games fresh/engaging for players, but once they are no longer cost effective to run or maintain (or a new iteration is released), audiences are always left behind.
Areas like smartphone/tablet are also challenging, where platform owners and manufacturers have the ability to render games/apps useless with each yearly hardware iteration and/or firmware update. At the very least, companies like Nintendo do a great job of making sure there’s always hardware/software parity whenever new hardware is released. This is great for both developers and gamers – and at the very least - helps give digital software its optimal ’shelf life’.
Chris Chau, CIRCLE: I think it's fair to allow people to download these games again, if they want to replay them, sometimes older stuff can be a precious memory for someone.
For me, it reminds me to make a sequel for our 3DS games!

We'd like to thank all of those that took part in this feature, giving a developer and publisher insight into the upcoming store closures. Let us know what you think, as always, in the comments.
Further reading:
Comments 49
Note that Dylan Cuthbert's games were published by Nintendo, and thus royalties are different from the rest of the interviewees.
The rest of these devs should still be receiving money for your eShop purchases.
Those Shin'en games are still the bomb. I replayed Nano Assault Neo some last week and it still looks and plays fantastic. And I think I've owned Art of Balance on 3 different devices!
Shin'en needs to get all of their games onto the Switch.
A lot of good points made all round. It definitely would be nice for officially supported emulators to keep these systems alive as soon as they die!
These e-Shops had a good run, but they had to end at some point.
Removed - unconstructive
@blindsquarel,
Yes the article about the Mario 3-D collection article, about the other article stating the game was going to be discontinued, and this was somehow going to leave millions upon millions without the game, fast forward to 2022, and I could not give my copy away.
@johnvboy
I still see the game at every store that sells games. In fact it has more stock then games like yoshis crafted world most of the time.
Wait, was there an article about the eShop closures yesterday? I must have missed it.
@johnvboy Funny enough was in Game today and my sister bought a brand new copy of 3D All Stars.
@blindsquarel For me, I'm happy to see the 3DS and Wii U return to the spotlight. Let the fans enjoy our final year with the systems' eShop features. We'll mourn now and can move on in 2023, lol.
@Burning_Spear
And the day before, and the day before that, and......
( I know this is exaggerated but you get my point)
@WallyWest,
You must be mistaken, the game is only available on Flea-bay where you can see copies selling for £2500.
The future is now, old man
They all bring up good points here, but Jools from Atooi definitely brings up the biggest one in that a lot of the 3rd party and indie titles rely on the devs to bring them over. That part is the savior or the death of some of these game. Some devs are more than willing to try and preserve their works, while others simply aren't able to thanks to budget or time constraints, are out of business and can't bring them over, or they simply won't do it (which is the one that hurts the most). I hope that almost all of them can make it to new platforms, but that all remains to be seen in the future
As someone who found a game his father programmed for the C64 on archive.org, I want to see video games preserved. I would have never known about that bit of my family history had someone, somewhere not preserved it. But I also understand that this is a financial decision and relevant laws make this legally difficult. I wish there was exceptions to better allow our culture to be preserved, but there is an equally powerful desire by some to horde culture for profit.
But to whoever archived my dad's game, thanks.
@WallyWest For all the sky-is-falling, evil-Nintendo rhetoric about that game, it's still widely available in retail. There are a couple of Targets near me, and each still had it the last time I was there. And I know I've seen it in Best Buy fairly recently.
I purchased so much from the eshop both on 3DS and Wii U over the years so really when we got word they were closing down it didn't really come as a shock.
Siesta Fiesta HD for Switch please.
@TheUnrestCure yes, really wish Nano Asault Neo came to the Switch
Removed - current gen piracy/emulation
This was really cool to read all of these folks’ take on the situation.
I know how I feel in that yes, we knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it okay or any better.
It really sucks to see my personal favorite system ever, with such a MASSIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE library, go away.
Now I hav to worry about updating everything and downloading everything… ugh. I’ll keep it alive as best I can. There are a ton of games I still have yet to beat. And I have a ton of games in physical format as well.
The system will certainly not die along with the eshop, it’s just crappy knowing the connectivity to the shop will go away. I loved browsing it and hearing the music change around the seasons; the excitement and wonder.
I've never heard of any of these companies and a lot of their games seem to be low quality shovelware...so not very surprising the closure doesn't matter much to them as I doubt they were ever getting that many sales.
Removed - harassment; user is banned
I hope Nintendo will eventually add a purchase option for the games in its Switch NES, Super NES and N64 apps under Switch Online
Basically, this article points out the need of gaming co.s to make their games with emulation of those titles in mind; legal, and technical measures need to be taken. That's the problem with current video games, they are not being made with those needs in mind.
Stop distracting Jools so he can finally give me my copy of Chicken Wiggle or Hatch Tales or whatever it's called now, that I kick-started years ago.
On that note, that actually seems like that would be a good potential option for the smaller studios in terms of porting stuff across? If you can crowd fund it, even to hire an external dev to port them for you, then you can preserve them with less of the risk of 'is this actually going to sell enough to warrant the cost?'. So long as the games do make it across...
@UglyCasanova you must rob yourself of a lot of good experiences living in the "I never heard of it therefore it's worthless" myopia.
@UglyCasanova Can't speak for the others, but Shin'en, Atooi and Q-Games make quality stuff.
@Troll_Decimator Honestly, the whole office space thing made it sound like the closures would have an adverse affect. Then I read the article and they all say "Yeah we barely make any money off these stores anymore".
This is so not complicated or worth discussing.
If the e-shop was still profitable, they wouldn't shut it down.
If you expect a publicly traded company to keep running a service that is costing them money ... I don't know what to tell you.
Even if Shuntaro Furukawa wanted to keep this up (to be honest ... he probably does), you can only keep a red line in the ledger so long before you're voted out and replaced by someone who will get rid of it.
Also, this is a quick business tip I'm willing to share with you ... if the shop you sell your product in shuts down, you will sell less product.
@BartoxTharglod
You've clearly never played Puzzle Poppin' 5.
I'll be the first to admit that the series started to faulter with 3, and 4 fell completely flat, but 5 really returned the series to its roots while still feeling new.
It's a shame that 6 went through development hell, but hopefully after the rights being sold again, we can finally get the open world battle royal Puzzle Poppin' 6 that we've all been waiting for.
It's disturbs me that no one even talks how Kirby and The Rainbow Curse will be the one WiiU game that destined to be stuck on WiiU. EVER.
I had always wanted to get the game aduring the WiiU's mid-life. But at the time I was in a financial rut. That said...yeah.
But I did finally buy it two months back. So I'm happy. Just not happy about it being stuck on WiiU, that is.
@blindsquarel While I understand where you're coming from. I'm glad I'm constantly reminded of their closures. I wanted to get some stuff from the Wii Shop Channel and the Nintendo DSi Shop.
For the Wii Shop Channel, I forgot and only had like 4 days before its closure and I only got like 10% (random guess) of what I wanted because I wasn't reminded constantly about it. In the case of the Nintendo DSi Shop, I totally missed it and I was aware of its closure only twice: When it was announced and a few days after it happened. Granted I can get them on the 3DS, but I wanted to have them on my DSi XL.
Me missing the deadlines probably also has to do with the fact that, at the time of their closures, I was very busy and working extra hours to have money for a Nintendo Switch.
Maybe a reminder once or twice a month would suffice, not every other week.
EDIT
@DanijoEX That's a game I liked but I hate how good it looks on the TV, a screen the Kirby player doesn't see a lot.
Thanks for the reminder I need to 100% it, though.
@HammerGalladeBro You can find it on Ebay for $20-30. Same on Amazon.
Yeah. Nintendo shutting down the eshop wouldn’t be a big deal if they did very simple things. Like 1: making all of their virtual console games available on Switch. All of them. Immediately. We just got Majora’s Mask 5 years into the Switch’s life. That’s embarrassing. Especially when N64 roms and emulation has existed in quality form since the gamecube days. And 2: making it so that libraries, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to game preservation can more easily preserve their past titles without constant legal threats and action being taken against them by Nintendo. It isn’t just shutting down the old shops that makes people peeved at Nintendo. It’s that they seem to have overt contempt for any and all actions to preserve their past titles.
"Most media ages badly anyway and is better forgotten." ???? What kind of nonsense is this? Remind me to never buy any games this guy makes.
@Ultimapunch the fact N64 emulation is possible on an Arm-based SOC from the mid-2010s shocked me in general. While my Raspberry Pi 3 isn’t a graphical powerhouse, those games CAN run on them, but it struggled with certain titles. Goldeneye 007 was too choppy, plus Mario wasn’t buttery smooth. When I played around with this idea, I was completely sure Nintendo would try to emulate, but port instead. The fact it happened, I still can’t believe it. Newer Arm-based machines can run N64 titles, but the Switch isn’t running the same type of hardware many of these smart devices are running. I would say this is far from embarrassing, it’s was crazy that it works like it does now.
To give you some perspective, after trying to build a Raspberry Pi retro machine, I needed more power than it could offer. It was one of the reasons I built my Ryzen 5 machine, which ran N64 games pretty well. There are other options related to the Pi that are leagues ahead of it.
While it’s a shame these store fronts will close, Nintendo painted themselves into a corner with these systems. The Switch felt like a reset button. Starting new systems with entirely new forks, hardware and components probably got them thinking about how much of a waste it is to start from the ground up. I figured the Wii U and 3DS would follow their predecessors with their digital stores. There’s no way for the Switch to handle two different SOCs without some kind of porting involved.
However, I have many of these games on the Switch and NEVER bought them on the previous systems. I would imagine their volumes are greater on the Switch than the Wii U easily. One developer mentioned the 3DS sales went off a cliff. I think Nintendo Life found a headline they could run with in this piece. The rest of these developers saw it coming and expected a small bump in sales.
@HammerGalladeBro: I agree about the need for constant reminders.
I remember a child reminded me about the Ambassador Program for 3DS and I thanked him for reminding me the deadline was midnight, but by the time I got home, I forgot and did not remember until 1 hour after the deadline and lost all 10 free games.
Fortunately, those games came to other Virtual Consoles later, but I was super mad and, this time, the games will not be going to other consoles, so we need to get everything downloaded in time.
I would love to see all Nintendo websites boycott all Switch games and just focus all their articles on the closures to send a message to Nintendo.
For those devs with WiiU and 3DS eshop games: convert them to Switch if you haven't done it already. User base is far greater (WiiU) or more (3DS) then your current base. Should still pay the rent.
One of the developers claimed the DSi Shop is already shut down.
That is not actually true right?
@DanijoEX i got the ds physicsl version.. think it is better… still fits in my 3ds… thanx for the reminder..
Will play it today
@SportyMarioSonicMix Thought that was shut down already? Or am I misremembering?
@Ultimapunch "It’s that they seem to have overt contempt for any and all actions to preserve their past titles."
Usually because those attempts involve keeping them in a playable form in a publicly accessible website where people probably don't have to pay any fee to experience a particular title.
Alternatively, keeping them in a downloadable form in a publicly accessible website where people may or may not need to pay to download that experience for themselves.
@DanijoEX Funnily enough i was thinking about Kirby and The Rainbow Curse the other day, i think it's quite likely to be ported to Switch this year, Nintendo have already hinted that they've got plans for Kirby's anniversary this year, i reckon this is one of them.
@jsty3105: I saw an article about "X # of DSiWare Games to get before the Shutdown" a week ago, so why would they run that if it was already closed?
@SportyMarioSonicMix ah. I did some googling around. Confusion solved. Dsi shop closed in 2017. Some DSiware games are still available only through the DSiware part of the 3DS eShop until that eshop closes.
Tbf, NL mentioned that last part in their article.
@jsty3105: Oh, I did not actually read that article yet, as I am focusing on Virtual Console first, but did they say how many DSiWare games are still available out of the large amount that were originally available?
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