The Wii and DSi Shop channels are down worldwide with no explanation from Nintendo

Users are reporting that the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel and the Nintendo DSi Shop Channels are both down, with no prior warning from Nintendo.

Players who attempt to access the Wii Shop in order to re-download previously purchased content will be greeted with a blank page, which after a few minutes will return an error message;

“Error Code: 209601. Unable to connect to the server.

Please wait a moment and try again. Visit support.nintendo.com for assistance.”

According to Nintendo’s support site, this error “generally indicates the inability to get a good connection due to wireless interference.”

While the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel did cease to allow new purchases in 2019, the ability to re-download previously purchased content was not affected.

It was announced at the time that the ability to redownload this content would end at some undisclosed point in the future, however, no further announcement has been made.

Users attempting to access the Nintendo DSi Shop are being met with error 290502, which according to Nintendo is related to “wireless interference”.

With both systems seemingly resulting in similar error messages, this may be an unintentional error on Nintendo’s part, however, at the time of publication, the publisher hasn’t commented on the issue or its intentionality.

In February, Nintendo announced its plans to cease digital game purchases on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS systems in March 2023.

From that date onwards, it will no longer be possible to make purchases in the Nintendo eShop for either system or download free content, including game demos.

According to Nintendo, after late March 2023 and “for the foreseeable future”, it will still be possible to redownload games and DLC, receive software updates and play online on Wii U and 3DS.

When the closure happens, up to 1,000 digital-only games will no longer be available for purchase, VGC analysis shows.