The days of the Wii and DS have long since passed for a large majority of the public. The Switch having taken precedence over Nintendo’s two cult consoles, the update and maintenance work was no longer assured, and buying games from the DSi and Wii eShop was impossible since 2019. But the servers were maintained so that players could still download their game, but it seems that this has not been the case for a few days.
Towards an unassumed end of Nintendo?
People going to the Wii Shop to download their games end up with a blank page, with a very specific error code: “Error code: 209601”. In this case, this error indicates a network or internet failure that is preventing the connection. A similar problem appears on the DSi’s eshop with error code 290502: “Failed to connect to the server, try again later”.
To date we have no new information from Nintendo that would explain this. In addition, several players around the world have relayed this problem, so it is not an isolated case. In February, Nintendo had publicly announced the closure of the purchase of dematerialized games on the Wii U and 3DS eshop for 2023. It is therefore an understandable logical sequence.
It is obvious that over time, all the servers of the old consoles, as well as the online stores will gradually close to make way for new technologies, but without an official announcement from Nintendo, this problem raises questions. Announcing it in advance and above all publicly would allow players to prepare for it in order to recover their dematerialized games.
So is this really the end of the Wii and DSi servers? Or simply a Nintendo maintenance that spans several days? For now, it’s a total mystery.