Nintendo's Killing Wii U And 3DS' Digital Stores (And Fans Are Angry)

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Nintendo has become infamous over the years for going hard after the people making free fan content and even harder after people pirating their games. The company would probably enjoy far more fan sympathy if it were actually doing a good job of preserving its own games, but it seems like its goal is to make its best titles disappear forever. To that effect, Nintendo recently announced it'll be closing down its Wii U and Nintendo DS online stores.

The discontinuation will only officially start to take effect in 2023, but Nintendo will begin gutting the service this year by preventing players from using Nintendo cards to add funds to their accounts. This all sucks because you'll find it much harder to play those games, not just because of the obvious scarcity that will come with the closures but also because of some dumb company policies that will make players have to jump through some hoops for the chance to play those games.

This is catastrophic even if you believe that Nintendo should focus all of its efforts on the Switch. It really should, but only if it were to make all games available to purchase in it. If you want to play not all but some of the classic titles, you'll have to subscribe to Nintendo's service, which means that you won't own any of these games, but rather the chance to play them – so long as you keep on paying your monthly fee.

But less about the upcoming Apocalypse that will screw us all, more about the direct victims, the owners of the Wii U, and of the 3DS. Look, one can easily write off the Wii U as a failure that sold poorly because of its awful design, but you're still talking about the home of a surprising number of masterpieces. I shouldn't even have to mention the catalog of the 3DS, a console that defeated Sony in the handheld market during the height of the PlayStation 2 hype.

No matter how many games your latest-gen system has, it could always have more – especially when they're quality titles with a huge following. Westerners didn't take the news kindly, so Kotaku took to Japan to see how well Nintendo fans are handling it over there just to see if we were overreacting – they might have to go check up on Korea next, as replies vary from "I'm able to trust Sony more than Nintendo," to "Ridiculous. This makes me only want to buy from Steam." Anyway, let's hope Nintendo catches some sort of trend going on now that Valve is coming up with a very promising new handheld that sure as hell won't have any sort of catalog limitations.

Top Image: Nintendo