Reminder: The Wii Shop Channel Closes This Month, Here's What That Means For You

Thanks for the heads up!

How about a feature: What should you use your remaining Wii points on?

This is why I prefer to buy physical copies.

"make sure to spend any remaining Wii Points"
If only i could buy something with the 100 Wii Points i still have.

But thanks for the reminder

This is why I buy games physically whenever possible. Now there are a whole library of games you can’t play without breaking the law.

And then this means someday the couple hundred vc/wiiware games will also be ticking closer to a slow death too. One thing I don’t like about this digital age. At least apple and steam have figured out that even though my pc and iPods have died, I can still play the games I want years later, or get my music back.

I just did the transfer two weeks ago. It was actually very simple. Only thing that bugs me is that i have 100 Wii points I can't do anything with. It's only a dollar but it would've been nice to have that tied to my nintendo account.

I tried to buy points when that possibility was going to end and people tried to sold them for a price too high, so it turned into a tug of war. It was the last chance to sell and also to buy, and I ended up buying a code that had already been used, and fortunately the seller gave me a refund, but I wasn't able to buy my first Wii Shop Channel games, and thus I don't have anything to transfer or buy.

But I'd love that some of the best ones got re-released on Switch. I wonder why they don't do it.

@able_to_think You can play them. What you can't do is buying them anymore. But once downloaded they're yours.

@Donutman how?

Can you transfer games to an SD card?
Spent my remaining points on My Life As A King and it's DLC.

I went back a few weeks ago to make sure all my games were downloaded. I don’t have too many Wii Ware games, but I really enjoy the ones I got.

I've already got the Wii Shop Channel games that i have bought and wanted. including the N64 games that never been on Wii U eShop. Super Smash Bros. Sadly i couldn't get Paper Mario 64 and Kirby 64 on the Wii Shop Channel, So I've instead bought them for Wii U.

Is the Wii now considered Retro?

@Moroboshi876 I know World of Goo is on Switch. A pretty notable WiiWare title right there!

@nintendobynature Glad to know it's fairly easy. Currently the only downloaded games I have on our Wii are from the Virtual Console shop - old NES and SNES games. Would you recommend doing the transfer? We currently have two Wii U's. One I suppose could become our Wii machine. And the old Wii can just be the Gamecube machine. I miss Nintendo's backwards compatibility.

@Akira_1975 People keep saying this, but it makes no sense.

Physical copies disappear from the market. If anything, they do so sooner, and those games become harder to find than they were before with inflated after-market prices.

If anything, digital marketplaces arose in order to fill the gap left by the difficulty in finding physical copies of older games.

It sucks that these marketplaces shut down, but it is no different than a physical game no longer being available at retail. You either have the copy you have, or you don't have it at all. At no point in gaming history — physical or digital — have your purchases come with any guarantee about future availability.

I think I may have 200 points left. Guess I best sort the games by price and see if there's anything that may be worth picking up, although I'm sure I will be limited to naff 3rd party picks though. I didn't want to transfer the games from the Wii to the Wii U as it would effectively make the poor Wii a paperweight, plus I seem to remember a few of the titles wouldn't get transferred. I have most of the games on the SD card, so when I want to play one I seem to remember I have to mess about with the data managment so there's space.

wah wah wahhhhh

I tried downloading my purchases on my Wii but since I transferred to the Wii U, you can't. You are forced to choose one or the other which in my opinion is ridiculous and shows how behind the times Nintendo is when it comes to everything online related. I will ensure that all of my Wii purchases are downloaded on my Wii U this weekend and then I will hack my Wii just so that I can download those purchased games on my Wii as well. Sad that I have to go through all that trouble while Microsoft and Sony make it so much simpler and easier to do the exact same thing.

@Marios-love-child nah. I wouldn’t say the gamecube is retro yet.

@Razieluigi Yup. Same idea as physical books and eBooks.
But, ya know, "all this used to be orange groves" and such.

@TsC_Xanatos But what about Konami's Rebirth series? Wait, Konami equals special agreements with Sony, for some reason.

Just think in a few years this will be the same situation on the switch.

@teamdave2002 thats all i had too. Mostly n64 and snes games. It only took me 30 minutes or so to transfer everything. You'll need an sd card with at least 512mb. I got a cheap 16gb one for 3$ to do the transfer. It's worth it but here's what I found out. To play the games on your wii u ( snes or n64 games) you'll need to have a Wii classic controller. The nes games can be played with a wii mote sideways . and you can only play them on your tv. If you want to play them on your wii u gamepad you'll have to rebuy them and can play on your gamepad or with a Wii u pro controller. At least you can rebuy them for dirt cheap. Nes games are $1 and snes are $1.50..n64 are $2.00. Again this is only if you already own those games on your wii and you're rebuying them to play on your wii u gamepad or pro controller. You cant use your GameCube controller which is what I always did. So now i need to decide if i want to rebuy them or keep them as is and buy a Wii classic controller

@JackEatsSparrows Blows my mind.

Physical is (was?) great if you happened to be there when the game was released. But after that, it's just gone.

And for so many modern games, buying physical is an exercise in futility since the moment it's released, the game is blasted with day-one patches and DLC — all of which will similarly become unavailable when the servers dry up. At best, you're left with v1.0 in your collection forevermore.

Game preservation is a serious issue. But we're never going to fix it if people keep misunderstanding the problem.

@GameOtaku Yeah, that's the one thing that keeps me debating whether to buy games like FF XII on Switch versus on XBox. I know XBox is committing to long-term support of digital games, forward compatibility, etc, which has become a bit part of their appeal as a digital platform.....Digital games purchased on the 360 that they've made compatible with the X1 are almost certain to be "X2" compatible, and likely beyond. Whereas we know Switch digital games end here.

@setezerocinco how what?

I transferred everything to my Wii U the day I got it, then hacked and downloaded all the rare titles on to my Wii.

Good heads up but now I'm really glad i have a Soft modded Wii haha

@Donutman how what where?

@Razieluigi physical is great if you resell or trade in your games. Let’s just look at last gen Wii u. I traded and resold over 20 retail Wii u games because they were physical but those who opted to buy these digitally are stuck with no resell option.

Me and my friend bought super bomber r for the switch along zelda. I bought it physical and they downloaded digital. After a month I traded in my game and got something else where as he’s stuck with it and full eshop price

@WaveBoy That would be great. Physically or not. After all they seem to be on the short side.

But there IS some kind of agreement between those 2 companies. Because Castlevania Requiem is a PS4 exclusive (apparently Sony founded it, but it's a retro re-release, so there was no need of that), and Arcade Archives Konami games release on PS4 only for some reason.

And people arguing that physical is to re-sell. Again. Hasn't anybody thought that many people just like their stuff physical? Having games's boxes on the shelves? I've never sold a game after completing it, so that was never the reason to buy physical.

@Jokerwolf how did you do that with Wii U? With the Wii I could do that, but Wii U Not.

@Nagi_Nagisa I think you can get some of the Mega Man 9 and 10 DLC with that.

@Razieluigi
"Physical copies disappear from the market. If anything, they do so sooner, and those games become harder to find than they were before with inflated after-market prices"

No.
Physical games will NOT disappear.
We still can hunt them from Ebay or playasia or other online shopping website.
And the price is NOT always inflated than market price. Some of them are really cheaper than MSRP.
BTW, you CANNOT sell digital games. Only physical games you can sold and it's worthy.

@1UP_MARIO That's fine, but a completely separate issue.

Clearly, people who buy games online don't expect to trade them later. They know that going in.

This discussion is about the ridiculous idea that the closing of a digital marketplace represents a catastrophe for the industry.

@setezerocinco
Don't listen to jokerwolf who always think hacking the machines is something legal.
Just leave him alone.

@setezerocinco Hacking the Wii is pretty simple, it is literally as easy as visiting a website. Transferring Wii data to Wii U was an app you had to download.

@Anti-Matter It is YOUR hardware once you purchase it and you can do whatever you please with it.

@Jokerwolf wait, but you hacked the Wii or the Wii U? The Wii I did hacked, but the Wii U I could not find a way.

I remember when the Wii shop opened. It's kinda sad this is closing. There were a ton of titles I never got around to playing on it. Also a lot of titlyI haven't seen around anywhere else. I figured most companies would have ported their titles, if it was possible.

Well that sucks. I should probobly download the transfer software now so I can transfer my stuff in case I ever get a wii u in the first place.

@Jokerwolf
" It is YOUR hardware once you purchase it and you can do whatever you please with it."

I can apply my machines with stickers to beautify them but i will NOT modding them to play completely illegal whatsoever.
Stop legalizing something illegal.
That's completely wrong.

@Nagi_Nagisa
Almost the same for me. I was stuck with 200 Wii points after my last purchase.

Bye bye first Virtual Console You will be missed greatly

@setezerocinco
With little hacking, Wii U becomes the ultimate Nintendo system with Gamecube support included. Haven't done it yet myself.

@Anti-Matter I've already addressed those things, and I'm not saying that physical games are a bad thing. I own lots of old cartridges, and I continue to seek out others for my collection. People are absolutely welcome to prefer physical to digital or vice-versa. What they are not welcome to do is imagine that physical games are the magic solution to the problem.

The ability to fight over a small, pre-existing selection of out-of-print games is not the same as being able to purchase them. Contrary to your take, lots of old games are extremely expensive. Anybody trying to amass a physical collection of classic games is already well aware that you are incorrect. Games like Sin and Punishment or Rondo of Blood would have been nearly impossible to play in the modern era without digital sales.

Add to that the fact that physical media don't last forever. Cartridges will probably outlast us, but they'll still fail eventually. Discs are fragile, and eventually suffer scratches and rot.

Physical and digital purchases each have their pros and cons. But anybody diagnosing the problem as "digital games suck and physical games are great" is not treating the issue with the nuance or consideration that it deserves.

Btw, Goodbye Wii ware games.... 😭
I will miss you from Youtube to watch the gameplay used to be.

@Razieluigi However physical we can buy used or second hand, the only way to do this with digital only games would be to buy a 2nd hand wii with the software already installed.
Cutting off a digital store essentially cuts of all access to that game.

@Anti-Matter Not much anyone can do so it doesn't really matter.

@Razieluigi
Well, that's your opinion.
But it will NOT discourage me and other games collector to keep adding physical games.
Physical media games might be damaged by certain factors, we can lose them someday, but it will never make our passion to collect the games in physical media disappear.
We will never stop adding physical media games when Ebay / playasia / Online shopping website still open their business. The pessimist opinion that owning physical games that will not last forever, it will NOT makes us get intimidated.

@Akira_1975 A timely reminder that one day not too far away all your digital purchases will be gone forever. Lots of people still say... No they wont be lost forever, PSP and Wii proving that all of the digital content will be lost if your hardware goes wrong. Physical is still the sensible option.

I bought points last years and downloaded Robdo of Blood, Ys Book I&II for PCE, and Castlevania Rebirth and Contra Rebirth from Wii Shop. I won’t have access to these from anywhere else so I made sure I got them before it died. This is why I buy physical where possible.

I wish you could still add money to grab a few last-minute titles. There are still a few left I would get for my Wii U.

@Luffymcduck I did and it’s the ultimate console

@GameOtaku No. That's a dumb thing to say, and you know it.

Wii released in... late 2006, so let's say it released in 2007. Even if the situation was the same with the Switch, it'd be another decade before you could no longer re-download your games. So... 2029.

That's unlikely to happen, though, because with the 3DS/Wii U, Nintendo actually developed the architecture for a modern storefront going forward. The Wii shop was their first real foray into online distribution, and it wasn't made to be future-proof. There's no reason for Nintendo to selectively make certain games on the eshop available for download and to restrict access to others when they're all on the same basic system.

Which is why games on the similarly old PS3 are still freely available to purchase and download. And why that'll likely remain the case well into the future.

@bluemujika And that's all fine. Those are good things about physical. As I said, both physical and digital have their pros and cons.

Despite Anti-Matter's weird ranting, I'm not trying to discourage anybody from having, or even preferring, physical games. I collect them myself — especially cartridges. I think there's something special about playing on the original cartridge.

But the physical era wasn't some magical past when games lasted forever and remained permanently available to anybody that wanted to try them. Games vanished and became broadly unplayable for literal decades at a time. The digital era is, to a large extent, a response to the fact of classic games becoming rare and increasingly difficult to play.

Hmmm, think I still haven't downloaded Chrono Trigger for some reason. Might have a look and see whether that and any other title not available on the virtual console of the Wii U is worth downloading before the end of the month.

I have to find my 10 year old Wii first XD. And see if their are Free stuff I can download!

@Razieluigi oops. Sorry must of been a misunderstanding.

@Akira_1975 of wiiware titles?

Thanks for the heads up here, I’ll definitely have boot up the Wii after all these years.

@1UP_MARIO No trouble!

Although a friendly warning from someone who once bought and sold games... be careful! When I was younger and needed money in school, I sold quite a few games. It made sense at the time, but all these years later, I regret every single one that's no longer in my collection.

Don't worry, they'll all appear on the Switch as 'remasters' at some point, anyway. For double the price.

Errrmmmmmm....according to this link we can still download purchases until further notice?

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2017/September/Important-information-about-the-closure-of-the-Wii-Shop-Channel-1285994.html

This right here is just one reason why the whole move to digital is kinda worrying for me personally: People paid their hard-earned money to own these games (not rent or stream) and a whole bunch of them are going to lose them forever in the very near future. I'm one of those people: I gave my Wii away, and it's very unlikely all those VC games I paid for and own are going to get downloaded to the system now, so they're gone for good. That's just not the same as with any old cartridge SNES games and the like I bought and still own now, even if I literally haven't played them for like 20 years. With these physical games I still have full ownership and can do whatever I want with them whenever I choose--but not with digital. For this reason, and a few others, I'm just not a great fan of digital as it exists right now.

@Akira_1975 this is why i will never buy any digital on a nintendo console, no matter how hard they push people into it i will never invest digital on the switch or future consoles.

Arenyou telling me that all the games i purchase in the switch estou, one day all that money is gone? I won'thave access to it??? For real? If so I'm not buying anything else on the eshop

@Razieluigi @JackEatsSparrows It's like you literally don't understand the very simple concept of ownership:

I still have and own, and can pull out and play at any time I want, or hand down to my brother or sell for cash or whatever, all the physical games I bought in the past.

In a months time I will literally lose all those VC games I paid my hard-earned cash for forever (and I paid to own them, not rent or stream them). And I can't even re-download and store them just in case in this instance because someone else has my system.

When these companies decide to turn off their services you can literally lose a whole load of games you actually bought (not rented or streamed) for good. That simply cannot ever happen with the physical games because I actually own them, and anything I chose to do with them is just that, my choice.

Not understanding this really simple concept, the concept of ownership, makes me think you must be like 13 or something.

@pblive that will be £49.99 please!

@impurekind exactly, physical games, blu ray, cds cannot be taken away from you no matter what.

@Xaritah including that streaming service a lot of people will be investing into....
@earthinheritor i have 2 of them actually lol

@huyi I had no idea... I think i will stop purchasing games online now...

@Razieluigi why would you care how hard a physical game is to find if you already own it....

@Akira_1975 how does that do you any good for digital only games? plus, nowadays games on disc are half-complete (if at all) only anyway

RIP, better make sure I still have Pokemon Rumble & Ranch on my Wii. Still wish we got those 3 digital Mystery Dungeon games for the Wii outside Japan. ;-;

@manu0 I can't believe I have to answer this question, but perhaps because you don't already own it?

This idea that video games can be preserved strictly via the small number of physical copies made available at the time of release is preposterous. Literally no other form of media works that way.

I think that gamers revel in their own sense of exclusivity. There's a sense — echoed strongly in these comments — that if you already have a copy of a game, then all is right with the world, and anybody who missed their chance (whether by choice or circumstance) deserves to go without it.

Point is, physical preservation has its benefits and uses. But it serves an inherently small pool of people, and one that can only grow smaller as existing physical copies fail or go missing. The idea that all of this was better before digital marketplaces is factually incorrect because it wasn't.

@Razieluigi cheers. I do regret some but if I know I’m not gonna replay a title I just sell or trade. I’ve been lucky

So is transferring from Wii to Wii U effectively locked out once the Shop goes down?

I have enough points for 2 more games. I should probably get them this weekend.

@Ralizah
Nintendo is already limiting downloadable games. You can't transfer games from 3ds/wiiu to switch like VC. Only Sony and MS allow that.

@Razieluigi
The problem is that for those who care about what some people call "art" (movies, music, books, videogames), digital distribution is mostly hell.

A movie, music, book or game, is something that should be enojoyed by anyone, independent of how long it has been out. A good movie doesn't become bad as it ages (well, some do, but some don't - and it's all relative to an individual's tastes). Same for music, or books.

Saying that "... anybody who missed their chance (whether by choice or circumstance) deserves to go without it." makes it look like you consider games as simple products that you consume, and not much else.

That might be fine with you if you only play games while they're "current" or "popular", but a lot of people like to play older games as well, and find "disturbing" the idea of buying a game at full price, knowing that you may end up not being able to play it anymore in the future, with that not being up for you to decide.

I understand the business logics behind all of this. I do. It would be ridiculous to keep up an infrastructure very few people still use. But then again, that means most digital-only titles that were available on the platform are not available anymore. Legally, anyways.

This would be like Disney removing all Star Wars or Marvel movies from EVERYWHERE, including their own platforms. Sure, some will share them illegally on the web, but what would you say to anyone wanting to watch these movies and not having access to someone having them physically (improbable but still) ? You deserve to go without it?

Everytime a platform like this closes down, I kind of see it as a reminder that if you want to keep anything, buy it physical (if available - of course). As long as you take care of your stuff, you'll always be able to get back to it. Which isn't true of digital distribution. Well, not always.

@GameOtaku Yeah, that's not even the same sort of thing. At all. 3DS/Wii U games were never going to work on the Switch.

Sony doesn't allow BC. A limited number of digital PSP games work on the Vita, but almost nothing from PS3/PSP/Vita works on the PS4.

@Razieluigi ever heard of reprints?

is there any titles you can get for 200 points, i doubt it but don't hurt to ask. It's been a while after all since bought anything and soon it's too late so

@manu0 Seriously? Reprints of classic games are incredibly rare, unless you're counting the dubious counterfeit knock-offs that are all over eBay.

@Nagi_Nagisa Some games have DLC as cheap as 100 points. Could always find a cheap copy of one of the games and use it before its gone forever.... XD

@Eagle9 DLC for some games.

@Ralizah
Some games I understand not being BC. But VC for example should be.

Coming soon to Nintendo Switch Online, Classic Wiiware games! We'll add 1 a month! XD

Wiiware games are perfect candidates for a switch release. Who knows if we'll see them again.

I loved cubello back in the day. It had a mesmerizing balance of puzzle and dexterity.

What DLC and for what games, i don't intend to add a cent more to Points so if 200 points will remain so be it.

@GameOtaku I don't disagree. Especially now that Nintendo has a unified account system. IMO, VC games that released on 3DS/Wii U should have had a small charge associated with activating previously purchased VC games on the other piece of hardware, like they did with Wii and Wii U VC games like Super Mario 64. Although it's probably a moot point now that the VC is largely a thing of the past.

@Razieluigi I'm a collector and have games for my 2600 so I don't understand your point at all. My physical games will be playable by me for many years to come. I didn't say I LIMIT myself to physical games. I said I PREFER them. I buy digital when needed.

@Carnictis Agreed, that's why I said I "PREFER" them =) I still buy digital when needed. Digital games are definitely more convenient while the digital market is available. As a collector, I just tend to gravitate towards physical copies. I still play my Atari 2600 from time to time =)

@Stocksy Agree 100%. When you buy digital, you're not really buying to own. You're technically buying the right to play a game while the market is available. You're essentially renting. I still buy digital only games however and go digital for sport titles I don't care to collect.

@johndevine I buy digital when I need to. My comment was a general comment in regards to digital titles, not just the Wii. The point is digital markets shut down at some point. I prefer physical but go digital in some cases (digital only titles and sports titles).

@Akira_1975 You're creating an argument where there is none. I have a working 2600 and tons of cartridges as well. More power to you. I love this stuff. I'm not anti-physical. I'm anti-pretending-that-physical-is-a-miracle-cure-for-the-problem-of-obsolescence.

All my digital purchases are on physical storage in my home — hard drives, SD cards, whatever. That makes them no different than any other physical game that I own. It's still just data stored in a thing.

And in all cases, if that thing stops working or goes missing-- whether it be a hard drive, a console, a disc, or a cartridge — the data on it is lost forever without any good option to replace it. This is no more true of digital games than of physical ones.

That's literally all I'm saying. I don't understand why you're having such a cow about it. It's like I've reminded you that you can still get wet while holding an umbrella, and you've launched into a screed about how great your umbrella is.

I transfered all my stuff from the Wii over to the Wii U, i bought a lot of stuff when the news broke last year that the store was going offline, some gems on the system that aren't available anywhere else, for example the 3 rebirth games by Konami

I apologize if I sounded as though I was "having a cow about it". I'm at work and short for time lol. Hard to express yourself properly in these comments sometimes. I do disagree with your statement "And in all cases, if that thing stops working or goes missing-- whether it be a hard drive, a console, a disc, or a cartridge — the data on it is lost forever without any good option to replace it."

I have no problem replacing my older physical games on eBay or local retro shops. If my Wii dies, how would I go about getting Contra Rebirth on a new Wii years down the road? There are pros and cons in regards to both formats and they are definitely not the same thing. And remember I buy both formats. I just happen to prefer a physical, complete copy of a game. That's my preference and that's all I stated earlier. If you prefer digital, all the power to you. That's your preference.

And just to be clear again, I'm not "having a cow about it" =)

I would suggest everyone playtest their Wii games before the shop goes down. I transferred everything over to my Wii U when I first got the Wii U but only my NES and SNES games worked when I tested them a week ago. N64, TurboGrafx, and WiiWare gave an error. I had to delete them and redownload them (for free) from the eShop. It was a huge hassle but they work now.

@Realnoize I appreciate your response, but think you've misunderstood much of what I wrote.

I'm not characterizing games as something you consume and that's it. Quite the opposite. I love playing old games, often for the first time many decades after their release. I just played Terranigma on the SNES for the first time a few months ago, and it was fantastic. It was also an expensive pain in the ass to get a copy of it.

My point is precisely that if you didn't get the chance to buy a game while it was "current" or "popular", you may permanently lose your chance, and that's a shame. Physical games are frequently available for only a year or so, and then literally never again. The world is left with a finite supply to be shared by everybody who might ever want to play it again, for the rest of human history.

Your final paragraph really spells out the problem. You're imagining that physical media lasts forever as long as you "take care of your stuff," but that's obviously not true. If it were, you'd have no trouble with digital purchases because I'm sure you're taking good care of the drives you keep them on, right?

Games have a unique problem that movies, music, and books don't. They run in real-time on very particular hardware. It's trivial to "port" a movie or a song to a new format, which is why you can still easily buy copies of Animal House and The White Album at retail. It is not trivial to do the same for games.

The problem, in the end, has nothing to do with the way games are sold, digital or physical. It's with the generational obsolescence of the machines that play them.

@Akira_1975 No worry — we're all in the same boat here.

Happy gaming

@Donutman well not exactly about the games...many of these games are unplayable on newer versions of iOS or buggy as hell

I still have $30 credit in the Wii Store but I don't know what to buy! I guess I gotta decide soon.

I think the information provided might be a bit inaccurate. The Q&A section on Nintendo site says you’ll still be able to redownload games until an unspecified date. Just the ability to use your remaining points to purchase content won’t be available.

Disgusting that Nintendo are shutting this down. Anything purchased via PSN or Xbox are still available. No wonder people refer to buying digital games as 'renting'.

For anyone who’s going to transfer to Wii U if your Wii is hacked and you make a NAND backup before doing the transfer you can then restore the backup to the Wii and have your games and saves on both systems.

The only issue that occurs is when you go onto the Wii Shop on the original system and it pings the Nintendo Servers it disables the games that were transferred to the Wii U since the license to play them is on there now. Obviously this will no longer be an issue when it’s no longer possible to sign into the Wii Shop Channel a couple weeks from now.

I’m going to do this so I can still play my N64 games with GameCube controllers on my Wii specifically 4 player Mario Party 2. That’s the whole reason I never made the transfer before and I still can’t believe they never enabled the Smash adapter to work with the VC games.

@RainbowGazelle Microsoft did much the same thing years ago with the original Xbox's service (admittably, there wasn't much to buy on the service, outside a bit of DLC).

@AcridSkull Yes you can transfer WiiWare and VC games to an SD card, the shop also gives you the option of downloading straight to the SD card, rather than internal storage. All the games I brought on the Wii shop are stored on a couple of SD cards,* as they collectively take up more space than the Wii has internal memory (technically the Wii U's Wii mode only gets the same amount of space to work with that the original Wii had).

*By that I mean the same data on two seperate SD cards, one as a backup of the other. I've also copied the files from the SD card onto two separate hard drives via my PC, again as backup in case a problem happens with both SD cards.

EDIT: And bear in mind that the data is still locked to the origin console.

Important question!!

LostWinds 1 wasn't transferable to the Wii U before, but it is now. If I tried to transfer it to my Wii U from my Wii, would I overwrite /everything/ else transferred to my Wii U prior?

The Nintendo Wii, what a fantastic reliable system. I bought it on release 12 years ago or so and it still works with no issues, it might run forever

I thought once you bought and downloaded a game it stayed on the system for good. It seems now that you have to keep repurchasing the same games on new systems. When is the game truly yours, well digitally anyway

The problem with transferring Wii games to the Wii U is that the Wii U controllers wont work with some or many Wii games ( so I've been led to believe anyway) which is why I didn't bother transferring.

For me this means never go digitally as all your games actually are not yours but rented to a specific console. As soon as a company or shop is shut down you're out of luck. I'm buying physical games only which also don't require any downloads or activations to play.

@Nagi_Nagisa Exactly the same issue I have... 100 pts that will erode for nothing, no refunds, no moving it to the eShop... nothing.

@able_to_think And here we arrive at the central problem, and they wonder why pirating isn't going anywhere soon

I'm not going to enter the "physically own full games of yesterday vs half-baked physical games that need to be patched today" or "physical is better vs digital is better" debates, but rather I'll go in a different direction-- Rental and resale. See, I'm the type of gamer that lacks for the full funds necessary to buy and own ALL of the games I WOULD play save for a handful of everygreen titles with enough replayability that they HAVE to be owned. While it is possible to rent digitally (GameFly PC, I'm looking at you), the physical renting still makes up a larger part until that part of the business evolves. Then, there's the fact that the business has not evolved to sell digital games (or perhaps, the digital "key" that allows you to play a game) whereas you can fully do that with physical games (now, I'm looking at you Gamestop). But how would that work anyway? Resale for a physical game works off of someone buying it brand new, selling it back for a depreciated value, and someone new buys it at the used, depreciated value. But digital can't depreciate value by physical wear and tear, rather, it has to be marked down from the source via depreciation over time itself (No one wants to pay the full, original price for a digitally downloadable game from 10 years ago in other words). So now the resale business has to evolve to not re-circulate physical used games, but selling digital "keys" that a consumer can "sell back for a depreciated price", which would practically make Gamestop more of a digital rent outlet-- See all these blurred lines? The future is a mess, and unfortunately, new physical will stop being a thing one day, old physical will eventually breakdown and become unplayable, so until a unified consortium comes about with the intent to preserve all games, piracy is the only thing that will preserve games forever. What an awesome yet sad subject we gamers are bearing witness to.Don't even get me started on cloud streaming...

Most of the games I had for the Wii were digital purchases, I tend to stick with that for sheer convenience and storage. I thought it was a better way to collect games too being that they cant really get damaged. Like the Wii the Switch has a fantastic variety of games for download but like that are the games yours long term when you buy digitally. Does it make a difference if the game is downloaded to an SD card or internal memory, Is the game ever yours for good?

I very much hope that the Wii-Ware exculsives that have never been released elsewhere, get ported now. Because once this shop closes, they will be gone forever outside of piracy.

I heard that there’s a Skyward Sword update that fixes a game breaking error and this is the last chance to download it. Is that true?

I think that even if they no longer sell games for Wii-U, you should be allowed to re-download your games as long as Nintendo is a viable company. Having said that, I used to save older consoles, but then new ones come out and I never ever break out the old consoles. Lastly I did that with PS3, because PS4 was not backward compatible. I still did not play the PS3 games. There is just way too many games to play on the new consoles. I ended just selling it. I might occasionally rebuy a game if it is ported over or remastered with all the DLC. I had a Wii (which I also sold), but not Wii-U so I am hoping for a couple more ports from Wii-U, as I am a happy Switch owner.

Make sure to check the Wii U shop for any VC games you had on Wii. I forgot about Harvest Moon and just picked it up on Wii U for $1.50.

@Fandabidozi That is correct. The Skyward Sword Save Update Channel. You just needed to run it once and it would modify your save file. After that, it was no longer needed. (As long as you didn't glitch it again!)

F

End of an era.

Digital purchases usually can't be resold. If this changed, I'd be more friendly to digital.

Co.s would be consumer-friendy, & smart(creating long-term customers), if they would start future-proofing their consoles, & games to be able to still operate/function as normal/intended, even after official online servers/services/marketplaces close down. Ex: When the Wii U online systems get turned off, nothing more than an update on the users' end would allow users to still be able to play online with each other, and access updates for games. It would be on the users' end to set up, &/or host the data, & servers.

And there you have it, class. This is why digital only games are a BAD IDEA.

And what about the 'Operation Guides' of the WiiWare games? Will they still work? I think they need the Wii Shop Channel services...

And this is exactly why digital is bad!!

>spend Wii Points
You can still use them? I thought that option was disabled, like, a year ago, when they announced a preparation for service closing.

@Game-Over "Does it make a difference if the game is downloaded to an SD card or internal memory, Is the game ever yours for good?"

The Nintendo Wii can not play games off of the SD card. It can temporarily transfer a game off of the SD card and on the the Wii. The games you have purchased off of the Wii eShop are yours forever, you just can not re-download them from the eShop after the end of January 2019.

@Razieluigi

Thanks for pointing this out. I feel like all the anti-digital fans intentionally wait for moments like these to come out and voice their opinions nice and loud, even though their logic often makes absolutely no sense. If you're an anti-digital gamer, that's fine. But please for the love of Miyamoto stop acting like you're somehow better than everyone else for opting out of a digital library. The part about patches is especially important and something I've been trying to make people understand for a while now... if you opt for physical, that's fine, but your purchase is still tied to patches that require a connection to the servers. Heck, some games on Switch and PS4 actually require you to download a patch before the game even works! And I'm not even touching on all the issues I've run into with my physical media collection such as scratched discs, cartridges that simply refuse to work, dead save batteries that require soldering to fix, etc.

As a video game collector, I can confirm that this whole concept of physical being superior and/or forever is completely false. Both areas of gaming have their own pros and cons, there is no single best path. If you don't like digital, then going physical is totally fine. If you like digital, that's totally fine too. That's really the bottom line.

As for the article itself, I have a hacked Wii so i'm good. If I ever want to replay any of the Wiiware games, I can just download them. I do hope to see some of these Wiiware games come to the Switch though where they can be enjoyed by others. I particularly enjoyed Castlevania: Rebirth, the Ace Attorney Trilogy, and My Life as a King/My Life as a Darklord.

If you have access to a PC and an SD card and reader, simply transfer the games to the SD card on the Wii/Wii U, put the SD card in the PC and copy the "Private"folder to the PC. Then you have a backup that can be put on another SD card if the first one fails.

I think then the only worry is the Wii or Wii U itself failing.

@Taya Good idea, will be doing that soon. Thanks 🙂

@Heavyarms55
"I very much hope that the Wii-Ware exculsives that have never been released elsewhere, get ported now."

My body is READY if i found Kinniku March by Namco (Wii Ware) appears on Switch eShop. 😀

@Anti-Matter That does sound like a game you'd like. "Muscle" March...

@Akira_1975 Strange. I had the exact opposite thinking: This is why I prefer to buy digital copies.

I think this whole digital vs physical thing is just swings and roundabouts. People have been brought up on physical though, and working around its disadvantages is so ingrained into us that many people don't see them as a result.

The ability to re-acquire a copy of the software after the initial purchase is a massive benefit over physical, and the loss of that ability of not a disadvantage over physical in any way. Up until now, if I throw away my Wii Shop titles by deleting them I can go back to Nintendo and get another copy. If I throw away a physical Wii game I can't go back to Nintendo and say "Hey, I bought this once already, so please give me another disc free of charge!"

My physical Wii games are stored securely on my shelves and my digital Wii games are stored securely on my SD card - which is also backed up to my Google Drive. I don't intend on ever having to go back to Nintendo to re-acquire any of them.

The massive disadvantage of digital is the fact that you can't sell/purchase games second-hand (but that's a separate issue from no longer being able to re-acquire past downloads). I can fully understand why that would be a showstopper for a lot of people though.

@Yorumi Unfortunately it's a little more complex than this. The Wii Shop Channel is likely built on outdated technologies which may not longer be receiving security updates nor compatibility updates for newer operating systems and hardware. Keeping the existing servers online would potentially be as bad an idea as using a Windows XP PC for your online shopping these days. To keep the service running on a modern infrastructure would require regular investment and maintenance which wouldn't be feasible for a service that is no longer generating enough income to cover that.

@Midayle...Thanks for the info, will it be the same for the Switch down the road? Are the games that you buy digitally for the Switch yours for good

@Yorumi
** sorry for the wall of text. I was inspired when I wrote it. lol! **

Keeping stuff available online has costs. And for a big company, it's more than just server space. You'll still have to provide customer support, especially if your company is known for simple products aimed at the whole family. You can't just make them available and let people sort it out if they're experiencing problems. And even if you can piggyback the server maintenance to existing teams, it still would add some costs.

So basically, that means paying for an infrastructure that you don't get any profit from anymore. While this may be a small amount in the grand scheme of things, you can't, from a business point of view, support all your previous platforms forever and ever and adding their small costs on top of each other all the time. At one point, those small amounts required to support each platform will add up to a bigger chunk of money.

This could've been avoided if companies like Nintendo were ACTUALLY forward-thinking, keeping the same infrastructure and basic network functions for each new generation. Maybe upgrade it over time. That's the way most big software/hardware companies work nowadays, except maybe, some from the videogame world. In most platforms out there, your account and downloads are following you from device to device without much problems. But that's because companies stick with their platforms, and it was tought this way from the start.

Nintendo has always been late when it comes to managing console connectivity. In a way, they are now roughly where Microsoft and Sony were when the 360 and PS3 launched. And even worse, Nintendo seems to make closed ecosystems for each of their consoles. They manage users Nintendo IDs, that most users have to link to each different ecosystem on different consoles. Nintendo seems to have taken a slightly more modern approach with the Switch, but until they release a new console, there's still no way to tell 100%.

It's easy to think, from a consumer perspective, that keeping a whole system of online store downloads online has almost no costs. But if anyone actually worked for a company with any form of big, national network infrastructures, you know that nothing "just works" without any costs. Stuff break. Stuff goes down. You need to provide support. You need a help desk for every service you provide, and so on...

If a company's smart, they won't scatter their services on different servers across multiple different platforms, different logins, etc... If you keep all your stuff on a single platform, not only it simplify things from a support point of view, it also offers a lot more future-proofing.

This happens mostly because Nintendo wasn't smart on that aspect.

Although the Wii was a huge success I hated it and to me it was hands down the worst Nintendo console. Much preferred the Wii U which was a huge failure but they do say art is subjective.

@Taya
Thanks for the heads-up. I just finished checking my games and they are all OK. It took 3 hours because I've got 95, which is quite amazing and I couldn't help but play some of them. Things like Drift Mania and Rush Rush Rally Racing are excellent, but I also bought stuff like Monochrome Racing and Anima Ark of Sinners.

What are everyone else's favourites?

@Yorumi
I get what you're saying, but keep in mind that there's a lot more to think about when you're dealing with a platform that has an online store component, and millions of users, even if only a small portion of them are still active. While many functionalities are automated, you would still need a support team to take care of this, as the platform is a completely different one.

The problem isn't happenning on Steam because Steam has always been a single platform that evolved over time. There was never a second Steam platform launched, requiring a new login and granting you with a new library, incompatible with the old one.

Nintendo is just simply not forward-thinking. They could've have everyone on the same platform since the Wii days. One account tied to you, working on all devices. Wii, Wii U, 3DS, Switch, and so on. With content bought on previous ones available on other platforms as well, if available through the system. This would've been perfect, and since the same platform would have been used for all, the old Wii store and apps would have been able to continue living inside the current store at no additionnal cost.

The thing is, right now, this sucks. And I don't think Nintendo does that out of being evil or whatnot. There's probably a monetary reason behind this all. Keep in mind, the bigger a company is, the more responsibilities people will be expecting out of you. They couldn't just "let this live" as-is without providing some sort of support. Even a small team of a couple of people required to take care of this could cost them a couple of 100,000$ per year, which may not be worth it anymore because so few people are buying games there anymore.

I don't think Nintendo is evil (even from a commercial point of view). But dumb and not forward-thinking? Hell yeah.

@SigourneyBeaver
My favourite is FF: My Life as King. I was obsessed with that game for awhile. Second favourite is Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.

I would NOT recommend transferring virtual console games from Wii to Wii U.

@Taya
I've got FF too, but it's been years since I played it. Testing each of my games today reminded me how many gems there are. MotoHeroz is another example. So I will endeavour to try it out again.

@Peppy_Hare
For what reason would you not transfer VC games from Wii to Wii U?

@Yorumi

Well, the thing is that we can't assume anything about how Nintendo run things on their end. And while $100,000 may be a grain of salt in their books, if it doesn't bring over more than what it costs, it may very well get the axe.

Look, we can't always assume that all big companies are run by the most intelligent people. Or that because they're successful, what happens behind closed doors is obviously super intelligent. I'll tell you a story of a major bank making billions every year. Know someone who works there. You'd think that a bank making billions would run on super modern systems, with all kind of automated things going on... but... no. They still run on antiquated servers, using various different platforms for different services that don't talk to each other which require manual entry of data in multiple places... you know, stuff that if the average user would know about would give them serious doubt about doing business with that bank. But it's one of the biggest bank in Canada. Go figure.

The biggest telcom company in Canada is also run with the stupidity meter at 11, for knowing many people who worked there. So we should never assume that big companies always hire top talent. They often do things (that we don't always know about) that are super stupid. Like not listening to their tech guys saying an upgrade to their system wouldn't work, only to ignore that and proceed nonetheless and break theitr support system across the whole country...

Also, even if something doesn't cost a lot, most businesses out there would shut it down if it doesn't bring a value that is perceived as being more than this cost. Even if it's 0,01% of their total budget.

Maybe the way things are setup at Nintendo's end makes keeping this online more troublesome than what it's worth. Who knows? In an ideal environment, of course, what you described would probably work as a solution. But it may not be that simple for Nintendo, for whatever reason we most probably don't know. The corporate world is sometimes full of inconsistencies and stupidities. For instance, many companies would gladly spent tens of thousands on an external solution to their problem, while someone inside the company could've done the same at a much lower cost. So really, who knows why they're doing this....

I'm not trying to excuse them, because I personnaly see this as an example of them being mostly incomptetent at being forward-thinkers. They must have a reason to do this, even if it may be something illogical (in our minds).

@Yorumi Haha, well I would say from my perspective that it would cost more than you would think, but you can only speak from your own experiences and I can only speak from mine. I would suggest that security is less of an issue for a game’s server, as opposed to a servers that deal in e-commerce. The truth (presumably) is that neither of us know what backend technologies Nintendo is using for the Wii Shop Channel service, and what challenges they may or may not face in its continued maintenance.

A former employer of mine had a legacy product that ran on the Microsoft Access 2003 Runtime. This started to have minor compatibility issues when Windows 7 was released, so we realised that we had should upgrade to the Access 2010 Runtime to future-proof the product against the next version of Windows. In theory, the 2010 runtime is 100% backwards compatible with code written for 2003. In practice, 2010 broke the product entirely. The company hadn’t scheduled to perform major work on this product, so they had no choice but to employ to extra contractors for six months – and by this time it was hard to find people still working in classic VB, rather than VB.net. It ended up being a massive expense, both in time and money, for the company, but it was an investment that they were willing to make because this product was still generating millions in revenue each year. Unfortunately my former colleagues tell me that the same thing happened with the move from Access 2010 to the Access 2016 Runtime more recently…

You may consider the expense to a business the size of Nintendo to be negligible, but the reality is that businesses want to see a return on investment for every single penny spent – if not they are going to have questions to answer with their shareholders and investors. In the cold, calculating world of capitalism who is going to invest money in a company that spends money on legacy services that generate no revenue whatsoever? It’s not evil or scummy, that’s trying to humanise something inanimate. A business is nothing more than a system, a collection of rules and procedures, designed to generate maximum return for minimum investment.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Nintendo has already stopped support for the Wii hardware; it’s been some time since Nintendo would repair an original Wii. You could also argue that keeping a few spare parts in stock and keeping their technicians trained on older products would be of negligible cost, but all companies drop support for older products once it’s beyond economic sense to do so (OK, not all, Miele don’t). This applies to both hardware and software; it's nothing new or unusual here, it's just that we're now entering an era where we're seeing it being applied to digital rather than physical products. The 3DS is still profitable; therefore it’s still supported, whereas the failure of the Wii U meant it was killed off pretty quickly. Also consider how the NES and SNES were killed off in Europe before we even got the redesigned “slim” models, but they did so well in Japan that both were still in production until 2003.

And keep in mind that the ability to re-acquire a product is a benefit of digital over physical. I said in a previous post that Nintendo would never replace a disc or cartridge that you previously discarded on the basis that you’d paid once before, but would replace a digital copy that you’d discarded. Once the re-download ability is gone, we just have to be as careful with our digital copies as we do with the physical, because neither are going to be replace free of charge should we lose them.

@lilock3
"Once the re-download ability is gone, we just have to be as careful with our digital copies as we do with the physical, because neither are going to be replace free of charge should we lose them."

True. At least for games. The problem I have with this, is that (to me at least) it is much easier to accidentaly loose what you have on your media storage (SD cards or other) than with physical copies. Granted, the situations that may lead to them breaking are different, but I've seen my share of SD cards just ceasing to work, and the small size make them easily lost too.

Some would say that physical discs can be scratched until unplayable or broken in pieces, sure, but I still find this much more less likely to happen to me than an SD card just randomly ceasing to function, or an HDD failing. I've even seen an SD card (old one, granted) loosing its content when it was dropped on the floor (No idea why). I practically got almost every cartridge and disc-based system since the Atari 2600 days, and never, ever, had a problem with any disc or cartridge whatsoever. Which I can't say of SD cards or HDDs or recordable DVDs (except M-discs).

@Realnoize I'll accept that SD cards can be fragile, but they're also easily backed up. The Wii doesn't use any special file systems, just normal FAT16B/FAT32. In fact, Nintendo give you instructions on their website on how to copy the contents of your SD card to a PC, so that you can then copy it onto a another, larger SD card for those who want to upgrade the storage in their Wii / 3DS. All of my Wii and 3DS digital games are saved on SD card, which I then have backup up to both my NAS and Google Drive cloud storage. I've worked in sys admin roles in the past and can't stress enough to anyone how important it is to keep good backups!

@Akira_1975

I agree, don’t get many digital games, can’t trade them either! Still have an unused wii points card, might as well see if it works. However, when do we have to move this stuff to the Switch? Or not... at some point it’s going to be gone....

I spent the last of my Wii points about six months ago for the TurboGraphX Ys game. I wish I would have had a bit more money on there because there were a few more TG games I would have liked to download.

I really don't care. 90% of the games I own on my Wii are all free games from Club Nintendo. If I lose them, I lost no money whatsoever.

Hello guys. Just a warning for who have Virtual Console Games.

Last night I was checking is all of my games were working and some of them (downloaded before 2014) gave me a "UNABLE TO LOAD" message. All of them installed on my SD Card.

So, to resolve this issue, I redownloaded all of them and now they just work fine. Don't know if was a problem on the system itself or on the SD card.

To put some fire on the brawl between virtual vs. physics copies, if I didn't checked prior the shutting down of the Wii Shop, I would have losted all those games.

I just got a problem now, one of those games was Yoshi's Cookie, and due to the title removal from the shop, I wasn't able to redownload. Now I'm contact with Nintendo to see if there will be any solution to this.

I have Wii points waiting there I can use. Oh well. If you have the space I also suggest downloading all the demos. They are free and it is a good way to preserve those as well.

The Wii VC and WiiWare has been good to me. I have legally acquired hundreds of games for the service and it is one of the reasons I will not be getting rid of me Wii anytime soon. Good times.

@SigourneyBeaver

Some of my WiiWare favourites are

10/10 World of Goo
10/10 Final Fantasy: My Life As A King
10/10 Hydroventure / Fluidity
10/10 La-Mulana
10/10 MotoHeroz

9/10 the 5 Art Style games (Cubello, Orbient, Rotohex, Light Trax, Penta Tentacles)
9/10 the Phoenix Wright trilogy,
9/10 Excitebike: World Challenge
9/10 and yet it moves
9/10 Tetris Party

8/10 Bubble Bobble Plus!
8/10 Bonsai Barber
8/10 Robox (an oldschool-difficulty metroidvania)
8/10 Retro City Rampage DX
8/10 WarioWare D.I.Y. Showcase

I wish Nintendo would remake the WiiWare exclusive Mii & penguin adventure Snowpack Park. It never released in EU.

There are other rare oddities, that may interest some of you. All of these are exclusive and only available on WiiWare:

You, Me & The Cubes is a unique and fun puzzler from Nintendo and Fyto, with a nice co-op mode.
ThruSpace is a fast-paced Tetris-block 3D-racer that can be hyper fast and challenging. Nintendo published this polished Keys Factory game.
The wall bouldering game Rock 'N Roll Climber is a sporty exercise with great use of the Wii Balance Board. It's also published by Nintendo and was created by Vitei.
Let's CATCH by Prope and SEGA is a chill throw the ball game, and it's necessary to unlock everything in the Wii game Let's TAP.
Monsteca Corral. I don't know where to begin with. Very weird game, reminds me of Doshin the Giant. It was weirdly addicting little ecosystems, but with some erratic motion controls for jumping.
530 Eco Shooter. A Railshooter by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems gets harder the better you play. Interesting concept but extremely short.

@Akira_1975 yes. That's great.

When framed within the context of this article you can understand how your outlook doesn't apply for the Wii store as it does on most other consoles.

Tetris Party.

Farewell sweet Wii Shop. It was a good run. Here’s my collection:
https://youtu.be/E-v0vYWsatQ