Wii Shop Shutting Down

For the last generation of gaming, it saw the rise of services of games digitally. From originals to classics, all three competitors and the computer market are all going for the slice of that pie. Nintendo had its Wii Shop Channel just as the Wii launched. With an announcement in September,  it will be gone after January 2019 as they are intending to shut it down.

So what is going to disappear? Well, everything. Virtual Console is going to take a huge hit and probably anger quite a few. When it first started it had NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, and Turbografx-16. Eventually, they added Sega Master System, Neo Geo, and Commodore 64 with Commodore shutting down back in 2013. The amount of titles are staggering, especially considering how small the Turbo and Neo Geo libraries were when they were around in the 90s. Some of these titles go for quite a bit of money, so this alternative to getting the expensive stuff is not going to sit well with some.

WiiWare will also disappear as well. These were titles that were made from indies or big name companies. It didn't have a huge library, but it was getting a decent stream of titles from 2008 through early 2013. I'm not sure how attached people are with this compared to Virtual Console, but it will not please some. There are a few other features I can't think of at the moment, but overall, it's all going to be gone.

What does mean at all? It means that you're never going to see some of these games ever again for WiiWare. I doubt people will go out and go after systems like the Turbografx and Master System to get titles. Whether the WiiWare stuff gets emulated, I don't know. It will be a while for its generation to get emulation going, but it needs a lot of time and patience. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are going to go through this as well, but they will last longer due to people still playing on these systems. Maybe they will shut down in the 2020s. Online is still being used on stuff like the Call of Duty's, GTA V and a couple other titles that still have servers going.

It's a surprise but not one at the same time. Nintendo gave it a good life. Points will not be allowed after late March of 2018, followed by the January 2019 shutdown. With all the other stuff they shut down, it was to be expected. An era will truly end in more than a year.