In Nintendo’s case, Perzanowski theorizes that the company either didn’t want to pony up the cash to protect the integrity of consumer purchases, or it simply wanted to force users to buy those same titles all over again. Hardware manufacturers now routinely brick expensive electronics they no longer want to support, or downgrade a video game console’s functionality post sale, again confusing customers who thought they owned a product, only to suddenly discover post-purchase caveats. The trend of eroding consumer ownership post sale isn’t just reserved to software.
#AND YET IT MOVES DOWNLOAD WII SOFTWARE#
As part of their effort to abuse copyright to monopolize repair, manufacturers like GM and John Deere have long claimed consumers don’t actually own the software in the vehicles and tractors they’ve spent thousands of dollars on.
The quest to undermine consumer software ownership extends well beyond video games. The decision earned Microsoft criticism at the time, but given the relatively small user base, the story didn’t seem to get much traction.” “Customers who thought they had purchased exercise content were told by Microsoft that it would no longer be available to download or access. “This situation is most reminiscent of Microsoft’s decision in 2016 to shut down its Xbox Fitness platform,” Perzanowski told Motherboard in an email. In the digital era, companies increasingly pull the rug out from under products consumers may falsely assume they actually own, notes Case Western Law Professor Aaron Perzanowski, whose last book The End Of Ownership highlighted this problem extensively. "I think the fact that you've haven't seen so much obscure stuff since tells you something about Nintendo's issues ," Cifaldi said. Will Nintendo keep offering obscure, old games and spend money on hosting them on the company's servers if they're not going to turn a profit? While Nintendo said it's going to expand this library, likely with well-known classics like other Zelda and Mario games, there's no guarantee it will offer more obscure games like Clu Clu Land, which was available from the Wii Virtual Console, and is still for sale on the Wii U Virtual Console. Nintendo Switch Online offers only 31 NES games. The Wii Virtual Console offered hundreds of games. The Wii Shop Channel wasn't the first time Nintendo allowed users to download games (the Satellaview offered downloadable content way back in 1995), but it was a good, legal way to play many of the company's classic games outside of tracking down old, physical copies. "I'm not worried about the complete absence of zeros of ones from the world, piracy will always find a way" Nintendo did not respond to a Motherboard request for comment. Maybe they didn't build it with the future in mind."
"It might be indicative how new Nintendo was to the Internet during the Wii era. "What sucks here is that Nintendo didn't build the infrastructure to allow people to support these games," Frank Cifaldi, the founder of the Video Game History Foundation, told Motherboard in a phone interview. Users could buy the games again from the Wii U's Virtual Console, and they might be able to get them from Nintendo's new subscription service on the Switch, but they'll have to pay for it. That means that if the games users bought from the Wii Shop Channel are not already downloaded, or if whatever storage device users put them on is destroyed, they'll lose them for good.
However, Nintendo said that in a yet unknown point in the future, the company will close all services relating to the Wii Shop Channel, "including the ability to redownload WiiWare and Virtual Console games, as well as the Wii System Transfer Tool, which transfers data from Wii to the Wii U system." But the day Nintendo pulls the plug on the Wii Store Channel should be a strong warning those who care about video game preservation, and any consumer who uses a digital store: We often don't truly own products we buy digitally, and when one of these digital stores go down, piracy is often the only way to preserve its history.Īs it stands, even after the store officially closes, Wii users will be able download any past titles they’ve purchased and downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel, provided they can fit them on either the Wii’s internal storage or an additional SD card. Especially given Nintendo gave customers plenty of time to spend any remaining Wii Points long before the storefront was shuttered. On its surface, the company’s move is easy to brush aside as the natural, evolutionary demise of a service tied to an aging console. Nintendo removed the ability to purchase in-store currency (Wii Points) last March, and starting January 30, users will no longer be able to purchase any WiiWare or Virtual Console games from the service. After more than a decade online, Nintendo will be shutting down the company’s Wii Shop Channel this Wednesday.
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