Run Your Entire Business With Nintendo Wii Until the Online Store Closes
The Wii has had a good, long life, but on January 31st, when Nintendo plans to shut down the Wii Shop Channel, it will get a little lonely. This means you no longer need to buy games online, no longer download games you previously purchased, and no longer need to use the Wii Transfer tool, which lets you transfer digitally purchased games from the Wii to its successor, Wii U. By disabling these tools, Nintendo is effectively shutting down the last remnants of Wii support.
To Nintendo’s credit, this change has been around for a long time. Nintendo announced plans to “stop using” your parents and / or grandparents’ favorite console back in September 2017. Nintendo stopped selling glasses last March, the currency used to buy games on the platform. In addition, after the Wii, Nintendo released two consoles. It’s time to move on guys.
Or not? If you have a Wii gathering dust on your shelf or stuffed in a back cabinet somewhere, you can plug it in for a second and see if you have any last second to do before the platform officially launches. out of service. “Even without access to their digital storefronts, the Wii is a great console with some decent games, so you can also make sure you keep them all when the console goes offline.
When you ditch this Wii, there are three things you might want to do before the end of the month:
Spend all those Wii points
Rather than just letting you buy games with a credit card, the Wii Shop Channel used a platform- specific currency called “Wii Points” – like Fortnite’s V-Bucks, kids – that you could buy directly or purchase as gift card to store.
Even though you are no longer able to buy glasses, it is still possible to buy games using any point you have left on the store (and transfer them to Wii U), so let’s go shopping!
To check your balance, go to the Wii Store channel. On the main screen of the Wii Store Channel, you can see the number of available Wii Points at the bottom center of the screen. Most downloadable WiiWare games cost between 1,000 and 1,500 points, while games for the NES, Super Nintendo, or Nintendo 64 in the Wii Virtual Console store cost between 500 and 1,000 points. If you have less than 500 points in the store, you may have to leave that money with Nintendo. If you’re not sure which one to choose, Kotaku has a good collector ‘s guide to obscure games that you probably won’t be able to get after the store channel closes.
Nintendo still has a list of Wii games on their website , albeit without prices. The general list includes games that are only available at retail, so it may not be one-to-one, but it is a handy reference and is much easier to search and scroll through on your phone or laptop than using the Wii’s search tools.
Download all your games for WiiWare and Virtual Console
Once you’ve made sure you’ve spent all the points you can spend, you should download any digital games you’ve purchased for the Wii, as the store will no longer serve as a backup from February 1st.
To find your downloaded games, go to the Wii Store Channel and click Games You Have Downloaded. From there, you should have access to a list of all the games and apps you’ve ever bought.
The Wii doesn’t have a ton of storage, so I would recommend uninstalling Netflix and any other apps that require online support to make room for games. However, if you’ve bought a lot of WiiWare and Virtual Console games – say more than seven or eight – you won’t be able to download all of them to the console.
If you still need more space, you can store Wii games and play them from an SD card. To transfer games from internal storage to an inserted SD card, select the Wii icon in the lower left corner of the home screen to access the Wii menu, then select the Data Management menu. From there, select the game you want to transfer and click copy. (You will have to play this game one at a time. Sorry). You can also download games directly to your SD card from the store channel.
There is one caveat here: if you plan on transferring games from your Wii to the Wii U, they must be stored on the console’s internal hard drive.
Bring your digital games to Wii U
Finally, if you own a Wii U, it might make sense to bring your digital games to this platform, which still has an “active” – readable: usable – store and ecosystem.
To transfer data from Wii to Wii U, you need both consoles connected to a TV and connected to the Internet, and an SD card with at least 512MB of memory. If you are using one TV, you will have to switch between inputs from time to time. Wii U must be connected to your Nintendo Account. Finally, Nintendo recommends syncing an optional Wii Remote to your Wii U, if possible.
To start transferring, download the Wii U Transfer Tool app from Shop Channel on Wii and from eShop on Wii U. Activate both consoles and follow the instructions. According to Nintendo’s instructions, you must insert the SD card into the Wii U at the beginning of the process and initiate the transfer from there.
If you need more help, Nintendo has very detailed instructions on the support site . You can also watch their video tutorials at the top of the section.