Nintendo released earlier this week I know They are closing the Nintendo eShop for Wii U and 3DS next year. This has a direct consequence that it is no longer possible to purchase games and additional content for the two mentioned platforms. It is possible to continue downloading already purchased content, but not forever.
On the condition of anonymity, a source at Nintendo Life indicated that there is a good chance that players will not be able to access the library of purchased content within a few years. For example, Nintendo will announce in 2023 that, if the information from the source is correct, they will eventually shut down the servers completely and after that it will not be possible to download the purchased content.
The question in this regard is whether this will actually happen, and how long it will take between closing the store and actually shutting down the server. There is no clarity on this and what the source is referring to doesn’t quite match what Nintendo said. After all, he indicated that the content would still be available for download for now.
“They will send a notice in 2023 that the server will be shut down after a while,” after this time, the suggestion is that playing online, re-downloading purchased content, and everything else will be gone completely. “People will 100% lose their games if something happens to the Wii U or the drive they’re playing their games on.”
So the simple tip here is to download all the content you own onto the systems as a precaution, so that you at least have a backup if it really comes to this.
Furthermore, the source mentions that Nintendo has wanted to shut down since 2014. This depends on sales, with Nintendo looking at the first two years of the platform as an indication of when it will pack things up again.
The whole article touches on other things and is very interesting to read, so you can here justifiably.
