The Nintendo Wii and DSi Shop channels have been offline for several days, according to a report from Eurogamer. Both shops may have been down for as long March 16th with no explanation from Nintendo.
A video from GameXplain shows exactly what happens when you select the Wii Shop channel — you’ll see a blank white screen, followed by an error code (209601) indicating network problems. The channel is down on both the Wii itself, as well as on the Wii U, which is what GameXplain uses to access the store. Meanwhile, the DSi Shop spits out error code 290502, also signaling an inability to connect to the shop due to seemingly nonexistent internet issues.
Nintendo stopped allowing players to make purchases on the DSi and Wii Shop channels in 2017 and 2019, respectively. However, Nintendo still lets players download previously purchased games from both stores (at least when they were still online). When Nintendo first announced the closure of the Wii Shop, it warned that players would be barred from retrieving or transferring purchased games with the Wii System Transfer Tool at some point in the future, but never laid out a set date.
This has left some players wondering: has that time come now? It’s unclear whether both stores are down for maintenance, or if they’ve been unexpectedly shut down. The Verge reached out to Nintendo with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
