Wii Shop Channel

Nintendo's first online store, the Virtual Console and WiiWare behind an elevator-music jingle, closed after twelve years

Shut down
19902026

The Wii Shop Channel was Nintendo's online store on the Wii, live from the console's 19 November 2006 launch, selling Virtual Console re-releases of NES, SNES, N64, Sega and TurboGrafx games, WiiWare originals and extra channels for Wii Points. Nintendo announced its closure on 29 September 2017; point purchases ended on 26 March 2018 and the shop closed on 30 January 2019, taking hundreds of games and one very famous piece of background music with it.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2006
  2. 19 November 2006 Launch
    Live with the Wii

    Virtual Console: NES 500 points, SNES 800, N64 1,000.

  3. 22 December 2006 Feature
    Internet Channel

    An Opera browser sold through the shop.

  4. 2008
  5. 12 May 2008 Feature
    WiiWare launches

    Original downloadable games; World of Goo and LostWinds among the first.

  6. 2010
  7. 2010 Peak
    Over 400 Virtual Console games

    Plus hundreds of WiiWare titles across seven legacy platforms.

  8. 2012
  9. 18 November 2012 other
    Wii U replaces the Wii

    The shop lives on inside Wii Mode.

  10. 2013
  11. 28 June 2013 Shutdown
    WiiConnect24 ends

    Nintendo shuts the Wii's online news, weather and messaging services.

  12. 2017
  13. 29 September 2017 Shutdown announced
    Closure announced

    Points end March 2018, sales end January 2019.

  14. 2018
  15. 26 March 2018 Decline
    No more Wii Points

    Credit cards and point cards stop working.

  16. 2019
  17. 30 January 2019 Shutdown
    Wii Shop Channel closes

    Hundreds of games become unbuyable.

The site through time

Browse nintendo.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2019 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Nintendo 2006–2019 Founded

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Nintendo announced on 29 September 2017 that the Wii Shop Channel would close: Wii Points could no longer be bought after 26 March 2018 and purchases ended on 30 January 2019, more than six years after the Wii U had replaced the console. Redownloading previously bought titles continued for a while but Nintendo said that too would end at an unspecified date. Everything sold through the shop, some 400 Virtual Console games and hundreds of WiiWare titles, became unbuyable, and much of it has never been re-released.

Our analysis: Every closed console store is a small library burning, and this was the first big one. Nintendo had no legal or technical reason to keep a 2006 storefront alive for a console it no longer sold, and its successors, the Wii U eShop and then the Switch, did not carry the same catalogue. Its background music, a placid loop written for a shopping menu, outlived the shop as one of the internet's favourite pieces of found ambience.

History [edit]

Wii Points and the Virtual Console

The Wii Shop Channel was on the Wii's home menu from the console's launch on 19 November 2006 in North America (2 December in Japan, 8 December in Europe). You bought Wii Points, 100 to a dollar, with a credit card or a scratch card from a shop, and spent them on the Virtual Console: emulated NES games for 500 points, SNES for 800, Nintendo 64 for 1,000, plus Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo, Commodore 64 and MSX titles licensed from their owners. It was Nintendo's first real online store, and its background music, a looping lift-music melody by Kazumi Totaka's team, became a meme years later.

WiiWare, added on 12 May 2008 (25 March in Japan), sold small original downloadable games: World of Goo, LostWinds, Mega Man 9, Cave Story, Bit.Trip and, at the low end, a great deal of shovelware. By 2010 the shop had over 400 Virtual Console games and hundreds of WiiWare titles, and it also delivered the Internet Channel (an Opera browser), the Nintendo Channel and the Wii U transfer tool.

Closing the doors

The Wii U had replaced the Wii in November 2012 and could run the old shop only through Wii Mode. On 29 September 2017 Nintendo announced the wind-down: from 26 March 2018 no more Wii Points could be added, and on 30 January 2019 the shop would stop selling anything. Redownloads of purchased software and transfers to Wii U were allowed to continue "for the time being" with a warning that they too would end.

The closure was the first mass delisting of digital-only console games and made the Wii the textbook case in the argument about game preservation: many WiiWare titles have never appeared anywhere else. Fans reconstructed the storefront in RiiShop and other homebrew, and the music plays on in a hundred YouTube uploads.

The domain today

Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel support pages remain online with the closure notice; the channel on a Wii shows only an error.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Wii's Nintendo Channel set to launch GamesIndustry.biz 27 May 2008
  2. Nintendo to sell downloadable Wii games from May Reuters 20 February 2008
  3. Wii Shop Channel discontinuation Nintendo of America 29 September 2017 [archived]
  4. We'll be waving goodbye to the Wii Shop Channel in 2019 TechRadar 29 September 2017
  5. The Wii Shop Channel closes forever next week Game Informer 23 January 2019 [archived]
  6. Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel shuts down today Engadget 30 January 2019
  7. Wii Shop Channel shuts down after 12 years TechRadar 30 January 2019

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).