Why Are the Nintendo Wii Shop and DSi Shop Channels Offline?

Last Updated on March 23, 2022

If you’ve been signed into your Nintendo Wii or DSi over the past few days, you’ll know that something is amiss. The Nintendo Wii shop and DSi shop channels are offline. But why has this happened?

After all, Nintendo usually inform users in advance when closures are coming.

In this case, however, no announcement has been forthcoming, leading persistent Nintendo fans to dig deep for answers. In short, the answers are scant: Nintendo is saying nothing. However, we do know that since early March, the Russian Nintendo website announced that “Due to the fact that the payment service used in Nintendo eShop has suspended the processing of payments in rubles, Nintendo eShop in Russia is temporarily placed into maintenance mode”. This, of course, is related to international sanctions against Russia concerning its invasion of Ukraine.

So, has Nintendo closed all servers potentially capable of serving Russian users with eShop content? Have they closed too many, anbd is this an unforeseen consequence of sanctions? Until Nintendo takes action – or at least informs is retro platform users just what is going on – all we have is speculation.

In the meantime, if you were only planning to head into the Wii Shop channel for the music, there is now a browser extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome that plays that funky retro muzak while you browse the web. Grab the Wii Shop Channel Music browser extension via the project’s GitHub.