By now, you are probably aware of the news that the Nintendo Wii and DSi eShops have been down for multiple days. In fact, it has been over a week since the 2 eShops first went down. Since then, Nintendo has said very little about the matter.
Well, Kotaku has received a statement via email from a spokesperson for Nintendo. However, they didn’t say much. According to Nintendo, “the Wii Shop Channel and Nintendo DSi Shop are currently undergoing maintenance. We will provide an update at a later date”.
Combine the Wii, DS, 3DS, Wii U and Switch eshope all in ONE. And never closes. Future hardware will just enter the mega Eshope. It will be Nintendo’s version of Disney Plus or Netflix. But Nintendo is stupid they won’t think of this until 2043. Why sit around and have many classic games forever gone? That’s stupid right there. Just sit there and ax out games for no dumb reason.
Pretty sure they are down cuz of the earthquake that happened the same day the shops went down.
While that would be great it isn’t exactly realistic. Keeping the servers open for all those systems and any future systems forever would have major server costs with not enough profit to make up for it plus certain software is only compatible with certain systems anyway. It’s not as simple as just running an older game for example a Wii game on the Switch the files are incompatible without at least some slight modifications. In a perfect world it could be done with little issue but sadly this world is far from perfect.
It doesn’t cost shit to run servers in 2022, that’s why Microsoft and Sony still have all their old storefronts and even games from the same era as the Wii up and running to this day.
People have incredibly unrealistic expectations when it comes to this stuff. Everything you described takes a lot of time, money, and effort, for multiple different reasons. It’s not as simple as something like netflix, since in that case everything is just streaming to a TV/PC (which also a bad example because they take stuff off the service all the time).
Each shop (WiiWare, DSiWare, WiiU Eshop, and 3DS eshop) all run games tailored to each of their hardware. You can’t just “plop” wiiu eshop game into the switch and hope it will work. Each game would have to either be completely reworked from the ground up, or they would have to run on an emulator which isn’t easy or free (and is riddled with potential problems, such as the N64 Online input delay) In some rare cases it is easy since there is a straight up hardware upgrade (DS -> 3DS and Wii -> WiiU), but this is not a simple process for any other case. Do you really think it is finically viable for nintendo to port games that no one barely played on the DSiWare shop? There’s no way they’d make they’re money back for like 95% of those games, and that’s not even considering all the 3rd party games. Who would port those?
What about the other alternative? Leave all the shops running forever? As others have said, this not only cost money to maintain servers indefinitely, but there are very real problems related to outdated software that could potentially be expensive to fix (later found security flaws relating to peoples credit cards, being the most obvious).
When it boils right down to it, this is the problem: Does the amount of money they will make out way the cost of maintaining old games? If the answer is no, the answer for the business is obvious: No it is not worth it to maintain these games. Companies cannot survive if they spend more money than they receive.
Despite saying all this, I don’t like it either. But this is an inevitable big problem with gaming going digital. The writing is on the walls, and it has been for a long time. There is no easy solution, even though I wish there was. However, saying they are “axing out games for no dumb reason.” is incredibly naïve and shows very little understanding of how the real world works. If nintendo could monetize these games somehow, believe me they world, as would any company, but as it stands there is no incentive for ANY company to preserve unpopular digital media of the past.
That’s not at all how software works. Not to mention the cost and overhead of hosting the old eshops is almost certainly a net loss at this point
Well until our needs are met, there’s always piracy.
We have to get our games somehow. If Nintendo can’t play ball, then those are our options. Better than nothing.
I don’t know which was more annoying: the emails of the “go to this site” or nikki’s “interesting enough”. I’m gonna go with nikki’s. I want to become Liam Neeson’s Taken character so bad right now. “If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop the spamming, that’ll be the end of it.” Lol
Are you high?
No, he’s Infinite Ridley. He has gone by other names in the past but I’m pretty sure none of them included the word “high”.
😂
He doesn’t need to be high to say stupid things.
Oh my! So It lives! How dare you leave me all those many moons ago!? cries
No, but my imaginary psychiatrist tells me that I am clinically insane. Hehe… Haha… HAHAHA!!! unhinged Joker laugh continues for about 36 more seconds