Nintendo Wii Shop Finally Returns

The Nintendo Wii Shop has made its grand return after being offline for months. The Wii Shop is one of the most instrumental innovations for Nintendo. Prior to the Wii, there wasn't much of an online component to previous Nintendo consoles and there certainly wasn't anything like an online store for players to access. The Wii Shop was unfortunately gutted in 2019, ensuring no one could buy any games from it anymore, but it remained active so that players could continue to download the games they had previously purchased. With that said, the app has been down for months on Wii for "maintenance", but it has had no real explanation as to what that maintenance was for and when or if it would return at all.

Well, with zero notice whatsoever, Nintendo revived the Wii Shop earlier this week. The return of the store was noticed by GameXplain, which helped fans rejoice over their purchased games making a return. Of course, fans are still unable to purchase games, so this purely a tool for those who already own their titles. Although a number of Wii games have made their way to Wii U or Nintendo Switch, there are still plenty of games that are only available through the Wii, including some Virtual Console games. With that said, fans shouldn't hold their breath on being able to access these forever. Nintendo has stated that the Wii Shop will vanish completely one day, taking all of the undownloaded games with it. Although this may be disappointing, this is an inevitability for these kinds of digital stores given what it takes to maintain servers and licenses for something a minority of players still access.

Nevertheless, we can still appreciate the Wii Shop for now and bask in its glory until Nintendo decides to officially kill it off once and for all. The Wii Shop's music has become popular with the internet, making its way to countless videos and parodies over the years. It's legacy is sure to live on after it is truly gone.

Are you happy that the Wii Shop is back? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.