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The Wii Shop Channel, which was the official online shop for the Nintendo Wii and Wii U consoles has shut down forever. The store shut down for good yesterday on 30 January, but all sales have been discontinued today on 31 January. The Wii Shop Channel was first opened way back on 10 December 2006. Lots of games, fun and memories have died today.
The Wii Shop Channel has been replaced by Nintendo's eShop, where you can purchase games for the Nintendo Switch. The end of life for the Wii Shop was due to the migration of the new console. Many games for the Wii are being remade into a Switch compatible version as the latest generation of Nintendo's console seems to be doing exceedingly well.
The Wii Shop was unique in its own way, nothing like its competitors at the time PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace. Not only did the Wii Shop offer games, but it also offered Wii points which was the in-shop currency at the time. Wii points have already been stopped forever for about a year now though. You had till yesterday to spend those points if you had any.
Probably the best thing about the Wii Shop so far (that even the Switch has not gotten around to doing) is the Virtual Console. For all the nostalgia lovers, the Virtual Console was a console that let you emulate games from some of Nintendo's older consoles. These included the NES, SNES and N64. The Virtual Console also included older games from the golden generation of Sega as well as some older computer systems such as MSX and Neo Geo.
The Wii and Wii U has helped define a generation of consoles and a generation of gamers. Games such as Pokemon Snap, Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger will be missed.
