Wii Shop Channel

» see shop.wii.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

the wii shop channel opened on november 19 2006 as one of the launch channels on the wii. it sold three things: virtual console downloads of older nintendo and partner-platform games, wiiware indie titles starting in 2008, and a set of free or paid system channels (netflix, youtube, the weather channel, news, internet browser opera). you paid in wii points, which you bought either by credit card from inside the channel or by buying a paper card at a retailer and entering a code. one thousand points was about ten dollars.

by december 2007 the storefront had moved more than ten million game downloads. virtual console at peak carried more than 400 titles. the wiiware catalog grew to several hundred more, including some games that were only ever sold there: world of goo, lostwinds, mega man 9 and 10, contra rebirth. the channels side of the store turned the wii into a default living-room netflix box for a stretch of 2010-2012 in north america.

nintendo announced the closure schedule in september 2017. wii points sales ended march 26 2018, channel re-downloads ended january 30 2019, and the storefront went dark the same day. you could still re-download already-purchased titles for some years afterward, then nintendo wound that down too. the catalog never moved cleanly to switch online; many wiiware titles are now playable only on hardware you already own and have not formatted.

i did not own a wii. by 2006 i was on pc almost full-time, the wii was a console for living rooms with families and i was a single grad-student-aged engineer with a desktop tower. the wii shop channel landed for me as the kazumi totaka theme on youtube years later, the way it landed for a lot of people who were the wrong demographic for the console but the right demographic for the meme.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the rise ~

the storefront's pitch was nostalgia. nintendo had a back-catalog that no one else owned, and virtual console let them re-sell the nes and snes libraries at five to ten dollars per game on a per-platform basis. partner platforms (sega genesis, neo geo, turbografx-16, c64, master system) joined later. for a stretch from 2007 to 2010 it was the easiest legal way to play super metroid or chrono trigger on a tv, with a wii classic controller plugged into a wii remote.

wiiware was the indie side. the budget was low and the audience was wide. world of goo found its first big audience there. lostwinds was a 2d frictionless puzzle. cave story made it onto the platform too. nintendo did not curate aggressively, which let interesting things in and also let some real shovelware in.

~ the cracks ~

the wii points currency was the friction nobody could unsee by the second half of the console's life. you could not buy a single 500-point game with anything other than a thousand-point increment, which left small balances orphaned. you could not transfer points or purchases off the box. when the wii died and the wii u launched in november 2012, the migration story was awkward: a one-time wii u console transfer that had to be done through the wii u itself, with all your purchases tied to the new hardware id.

the storefront was also a closed silo on a console that was already getting passed by. by 2013 the wii's audience had moved on or moved to a wii u, and the shop on the original wii was running on a five-year-old client with a five-year-old account model.

~ the day it died ~

january 30 2019 was the visible end. by the morning the channel showed a closed sign and the catalog was gone. people had been queueing through january to spend down old wii points balances on whatever was left. the eshop on wii u and 3ds carried on for another four years (closed march 27 2023), so the wider nintendo "you bought a digital game on a console" problem stayed alive a while longer. but the wii channel was the one with the kazumi totaka music, and that piece of the catalog losing its public storefront was the moment the shutdown felt real for most people.

~ what survived ~

a back catalog that nintendo owns and could re-sell again at any time. some of those games are now in the switch online subscription. some are not. wiiware indie titles are mostly stranded unless the developer ported them elsewhere, which most did not. the kazumi totaka shopping theme is the unkillable part, a 30-second loop that became a meme on every video platform after the channel itself was gone. the music outlived the shop and probably will outlive the wii itself.

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