Gaming Nintendo Wii Shop Channel countdown timer

[MaxiBash]

The time has come. On January 30th, Nintendo will shut down the Wii Shop Channel. Here's a timer showing the assumed time. No correct time has been given for the shutdown, only a date.
Anyways, follow the shutdown countdown here, and let me know your fun times with downloading Wii channels as well.

Edit: On January 31, all the streaming services for Wii like Netflix and Hulu will shut down as well.
https://www.timeanddate.com/countdo...hop+Channel+Shutdown&ud=1&font=sanserif&csz=1

 

[Maeson]

I find incredibly sad to see the Wii Shop and VC closure so near.

There are quite a few exclusive games still on there, way more than I realized at first... And all of them will be impossible to have access to legally, or at least to give the developers the money they deserve.

From well known stuff like the Konami games, My Life as a King/Dark Lord, the Art Style series of Puzzle games, and such to very underrated and obscure games like Liight, Snowpack Park and even the My Aquarium games, which sound completely shovelware are actually pretty okay and chill, with unlockables and such (you can even have whales in the second, lol).

Between exclusive and non-exclusive WiiWare games, you can easily have around a hundred games, probably a bit more, worth checking out, and for such limited downloadable system, it is quite a good amount.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

It is indeed sad to see it going soon . Hopefully all the great exclusives get ports someday. As far as I know, the only alternative right now is emulating or installing WAD files...

 

[Maeson]

I've heard rumours of Konami doing a compilation of the "Rebirth" games they did for WiiWare (Castlevania, Contra & Gradius) for Switch, which would be neat I suppose, but that's only 1 publisher and even then only three of the games they released on WW (others being Tomena Sanner and DRiiFT Mania for example).

Nintendo could also make a bundle with their WW games (like Dr. Mario RX, Fluidity, Pokémon Rumble or ExciteBike World Rally, which became one of my favourites ), hell, an Art Style Compilation would be great on its own, with both WiiWare and DSiWare titles.

But I guess we have to accept many of those games will stay on Wii...

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I've heard rumours of Konami doing a compilation of the "Rebirth" games they did for WiiWare (Castlevania, Contra & Gradius) for Switch, which would be neat I suppose, but that's only 1 publisher and even then only three of the games they released on WW (others being Tomena Sanner and DRiiFT Mania for example).

Nintendo could also make a bundle with their WW games (like Dr. Mario RX, Fluidity, Pokémon Rumble or ExciteBike World Rally, which became one of my favourites ), hell, an Art Style Compilation would be great on its own, with both WiiWare and DSiWare titles.

But I guess we have to accept many of those games will stay on Wii...

It's pretty much a modern poster child for digital archiving and preservation. Like you said, many of these games might never be released on anything but Wii. And that's to say nothing of Virtual Console.

 

[Maeson]

Yeah, I guess it a problem that comes with digital gaming, even if it also happens A LOT with physical games (specially on older systems, the vast majority of a library wouldn't jump to the next system), you still can track down a copy until it gets extremely rare (and expensive), I suppose.

About Virtual Console, it's sad to accept too, but the success of Wii VC showed that people had interest in old games and they could still be a viable way to profit, which in turn made individual publishers more interested in putting retro games on digital markets themselves instead of having them on an unified shop; which I personally believe it's the reason of why didn't get a strong VC after Wii (although I guess the little interest from mass consumers towards the Wii U also lowered the interest from Nintendo in pursuing licenses for VC games).

Even if I, living on Europe, was always frustrated with Nintendo and their 50hz versions of games on the PAL VC, I've always loved the concept and execution when able to play NTSC versions of games. Wii had a pretty damn great collection of retro games with over 400 hundred titles among different systems. Not only it was comfortable to have access to so many different games and systems but it was also a neat way of discovering stuff from past generations, even if by today's standards I'd rather use emulators for most systems on Wii.

N64 VC will be specially sad to miss, as the N64 VC on the Wii U is for the most part inferior (with a weird dark filter on the image and other things on the U).

Talking about VC, I had on my Wii Pokémon Snap ready to be played (I don't touch that game since the N64 was a current system!), I should play that in these free days I have, lol.

 

[jeannotte]

Hello,

Soon a patch for the Wii Shop chain,
KcrPL builds a script to patch the Wii Shop chain so that it works with Open Shop Chanel

==>https://github.com/OpenShopChannel


==>https://oscwii.org/

 

[MaxiBash]

WHAT
I mean, I've heard some Open Shop Channel discussions but, cmon KcrPL really looks like someone who cannot get rid of the past.

 

[duwen]

Despite having the means to download and play all the Wii shop titles without paying for them, when the closure was announced I made a point of going on and purchasing a handful of titles (the Konami Rebirth titles and a few of the bizarre niché titles that are unlikely to be ported to anything else, like Muscle March) just to show my appreciation for the service over the years.
I know that technically Microsoft were the first to have a digital storefront on a console, but the way Nintendo ran with that concept and evolved it changed the way developers make games and how publishers sell them.

 

[Deleted member 466238]

Last day!

 

[Videomanman87]

Yep and I have a question which I kind of need answered since it is the last day.

I am doing backups before the servers shut down in a couple of days of anything I might need in the future (like IOS files). One question I have, should I keep the raw download or just the decrypted .app files? As I understand they are encrypted with the common and title key? Is there anything these days that can't be decrypted and for that reason one should keep the raw download? I know that used to be the case awhile back where a few titles had problems, but I am guessing that has been fixed?

Also the decryption process will still work after the servers shut down correct? Or is there a server aspect to the decryption process that I am unaware of?

Oh and I assume if I ran into something where there was a problem with the decryption, it would give me obvious errors?

Want to make sure I am doing this right and I won't find out a few months down the line it was all for naught lol.

I asked this in another thread, but I guess no one has seen it yet. I would't post it again but again, it is the last day lol.

 

[MaxiBash]

I mean, it's kinda sad that the Shop Channel goes away tomorrow, but every single wad is saved on that repository, with the shop HTML stuff as well.
Clearly, Larsity wasn't even scared of this thing shutting down.

 

[Videomanman87]

I mean, it's kinda sad that the Shop Channel goes away tomorrow, but every single wad is saved on that repository, with the shop HTML stuff as well.
Clearly, Larsity wasn't even scared of this thing shutting down.

Figured it was somewhere. Just thought I would make sure to backup what I have locally and make sure I did it right and educate myself along the way.

 

[MaxiBash]

The timer has ended, however...

It seems like everyone used *my timer* for livestreaming and checking the time, and I just realised the time I gave was incorrect.
The Wii Shop Channel is still opened, and people can still purchase games. I'm very sorry for the confusion people.

 

[leseratte]

On January 30? Nintendo announced it would close on January 31, 6:00 UTC.

 

[OcZi]

On the nintendo page and the wii shop (in my region, south america) it says January 30

 

[Alexander1970]

It´s still there/open (EUR).
Yes,let´s walk in and.......


.......but everything is sold out/out of stock.
No salesman,no service employee,nobody to complain about,simply nobody.



only an empty shop........

Like in real life,good things must have an lonely end.....

*sigh*

 

[Videomanman87]

Interesting. Perhaps they forgot how to shut down the servers? Or forgot that if they did, it killed something else they need for WiiU/Switch?

I did try checking out that repository and I didn't find much there. I had more in the way of backed up IOS's. Unless I went to a different repository.

 

[MaxiBash]

Interesting. Perhaps they forgot how to shut down the servers? Or forgot that if they did, it killed something else they need for WiiU/Switch?

I did try checking out that repository and I didn't find much there. I had more in the way of backed up IOS's. Unless I went to a different repository.

They can't forget it. It was my fault for giving the wrong time.

 

[Ryccardo]

Interesting. Perhaps they forgot how to shut down the servers?

No, they never said that they were closing, just that the ability to buy new licenses will be disabled

You can still redownload anything you own (or don't, given tickets are not required for downloading...)
I doubt they will remove them before 2 years from today (European warranty, right to have a repair/replacement/refund at the seller's discretion, ya know): even for the DSi they only claimed redownloads for barely a year but they are still up

I am doing backups before the servers shut down in a couple of days of anything I might need in the future (like IOS files). One question I have, should I keep the raw download or just the decrypted .app files? As I understand they are encrypted with the common and title key? Is there anything these days that can't be decrypted and for that reason one should keep the raw download? I know that used to be the case awhile back where a few titles had problems, but I am guessing that has been fixed?

Also the decryption process will still work after the servers shut down correct? Or is there a server aspect to the decryption process that I am unaware of?

Oh and I assume if I ran into something where there was a problem with the decryption, it would give me obvious errors?

Titles are encrypted with a titlekey (which is written, itself encrypted with 1 of the 3 common keys, in the ticket - and so is the number of the common key to use)
If you have a wad you have the contents + tmd + ticket; add the common keys and you have everything you need to install or extract that title

For any title, contents and tmd are public
For "free drm" titles (the ones that are green in nus downloader) there's also a public "cetk" (probably meaning something like "common encrypted ticket"?) which is, indeed, a ticket;
for the orange ones there's no such thing and you would need to add a real ticket (which can be dumped from a console or downloaded if you manage to spoof console authentication), a real ticket that has been edited to be valid for all consoles then truchasigned, or (in theory, simply because there's no such tool for the Wii I know of) a completely made up ticket from titleid+titlekey (does that remind you of anything?)